M3tal_Warrior

I sortof implied the unhide option too, although not mentioning it. Of course this is to be implemented with that system, if being applied. As for the multiple ship selection, this goes with the suggestion to add a sorting function in there too (suggested that, seems to have been buried somewhere). The Tracking Station is lacking quite some basic functionality. One game I can't remember atm did that with the Wiki. Shouldn't be too hard, and also is a good suggestion. This is the main difficulty setting I proposed. Since it will greatly alter funds gained in the beginning, it will be a very effective difficult setting, if not combined with semi-infinite starter funds, but that's (with the suggestion) all up to the player - if (s)he wants to do contra-productive stuff I'm last to object, since it doesn't change my game. Help me, where did I suggest that?

If I can do you a favor here: Although it contains the bad word 'random', I see no problems - it'll add to the experience. You're talking to a chemist - I'm in favor for all science stuff! (at reasonable gain) Unlocking game relevant stuff is always cool, but I don't like that 'last page of book' attempt for the last part. It will mark an (implied) end where I don't like to see one. Me gusta! Make that building upgrades and you can count me in!

Nope, I still play career - I'm just good at it. As well as I play Tycoon Games and am good at it. Am I playing a sandbox with funny numbers on top when being at 250k gold (rising) in Patrician 3? No, I'm just good at calculations, and I like to see my efforts working out. That's the whole point; no one plays career to be tied down all the time but to be challenged to break those chains of early money shortages. Not being able to rise above those obstacles is wasting time in a game which has no end but the one you set for yourself. That is the EXACT opposite of what your premise was at start. It totally screws everything I planned to fit your demands replacing it by if [ "$TIME_DAY" = "00:00:00" ] then FUNDS=´"$FUNDS + $DAILY_CHANGE" | bc´ fi I don't go into this further, because what came after that was totally dumping 'success rewards', 'newbie failsafe', 'no time warp cheating' and 'challenging for players'. Now we're back to warping for infinite money. Scotty, beam me up. You're not getting that, right? The AI will always be better, because it has no response time. Try CS:S with ultra bots. They headshot you the moment their gun has no obstacle between it and you, that leaves less than 50 ms time for you to react to the bot running around the corner. It still has nothing to do with time warp. The issue is as I explained. Exponential growth suggestion error rate in humans. Time warp still is linear. If you don't know the difference, use Wiki. Right, that's why we still use stones for long range war declarations, live in caves and kill wild beasts with clubs because they can't go blunt like spears can, which in turn is more prone to failure and thus to be avoided, as your interpretation of Ockhams razor determines. See Cpt. Picard above for further comments on your thinking. By the way: I'm still not responsible for what you read, only for what I write. This applies to everything written by me, be it here or in the blog, where I still neither suggested patents nor specialized research teams. Whatever you smoke or take: Quit it! I'm outa here, you change your premises as you change your clothes...

Speaking as someone quite familiar with computers (administrating 4 (stacking up atm to 5) Debian root servers and quite sure more computers than you have ever had in your entire life, even though it's just a hobby) I see several issues with this suggestion, one of which was mentioned earlier. Now to keep the memory load low is Windows thinking - it's stupid. You don't gain anything from 4 GB free RAM, they're useless. You could have 4 GB less instead, it wouldn't change a bit. Every MB that is used is of use, and that's the whole point. What you suggest - loading (seldom) and unloading (almost every time) stuff as it is used - is what Windows does automatically, and it does that too good (wasting RAM due to freeing it - this is where pagefile.sys comes in). This is the reason why you have to restart your Windows now and then to speed it up again. Why Windows does that is the factor 'responsiveness'; it expects any time to have to deal with the start of a program that's massively consuming RAM, and to lower the startup time of that program to come it's always having a considerable amount of RAM free. I don't know about you, but with me that's the last thing I'd do while playing KSP (or anything else). Linux has a different, more intelligent approach - 'swappiness' tells the kernel when to free RAM and write seldom used stuff to the swap partition (the Linux equivalent to Windows' pagefile), the value can be altered any time and usually the default in most systems is at 95% RAM usage. Disadvantage: It might not start the next big program quite as fast as Windows (compared to how fast other programs come up, that is - Linux is still almost always faster than Windows). So what you're suggesting is already done - just not by KSP. Of course - everything that has to come from the hard drive is not immediately available to the CPU/GPU, thus creating lag when it's actually being used in real time applications. This is why database systems on Linux servers are either run entirely from RAM, or - if that isn't an option due to size or criticality of data loss due to power shortages or system errors - from massive stacks of high quality, fast responding hard drives (WD Velociraptors or Seagate Cheetahs, which run at 10k or even 15k rpm with 100-170 MB/s read rates and down to 3.4 ms seek time; while most desktop drives are at 5.6k or 7.2k rpm, with the corresponding smaller read rate & longer seek time) or even SSDs. Trust me - these drives are way out of your league, two of these babies pay you a private scale high end gaming system. Long story short: Hard drive loading is a bad thing during game, and you will see quite a lot of that if you help your operating system in what it does already. What most people don't know: Ever heard the terms 'spin down time' or 'sleep time'? These are times of being idle (no read/write on/from the hard drive for that given amount of time) when the advertised actions are taken. So if you have 60s sdt and 300s st, the drive will spin down to a lower rpm rate (which reduces vibration/noise, heat production and power consumption) after being idle for 60 seconds and after 300 seconds spins down to zero and go to sleep (and only taking a small margin of power to respond to wake up calls from the system). These times are lower with 'green' drives, obviously, and these are increasingly common in computers nowadays (almost every 1TB and up drive is a green one). But it's a cool thing, right? No, it's not. While it safes power and is quite good for storage drives which are used only once a day for 3 minutes or so, it is quite bad for system drives, for they will spin up quite a lot of times. Now one has to know some things about HDDs, one being the extreme correlation of temperature changes and spin up times to life expectancy. As Google found out in a test (with thousands of HDDs) it's not the type (server HDDs, desktop HDDs) determining how long the drive will stay operational without errors/breakdown, but the temperature. 20-30°C is killing drives quite fast, 30-40°C they'll have maximum life span and above the drop rate increases again. Spinning a drive up and down all the time, calling it out of sleep and such will kill the drive fastest - imagine your car motor while playing with the accelerator all the time. This is why my drives are allowed to spin down once a day (or so), while running (monitored) at 35-40°C most of the time providing data. And this is why you don't want your drives spinning up for one mod of 20 MB and afterwards go to sleep again until next mod come. So: No dynamic memory management in KSP. Don't do that - I like my hard drives, all of them, and they like me for not torturing them. The success: While running 20 HDDs all the time for years the last to drop out was 1 year ago, and this was within a RAID where small errors drop a drive immediately - it was a single random bad sector, and it still hasn't found a friend. I almost always retire perfectly working drives (for being too small in storage size), while seeing file system problems and dying drives in other computers quite frequently.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/89154-A-try-on-Perodic-Budget Use the search engine - it really does what it's advertised to do.

That's the whole point - I did start that from launchpad in the first place without any problems, and at least there's gravity instead of no force at all in space (Of course I know gravity is why all orbits work, but I think you get my point - it all is ruled out by centrifugal forces, so it boils down to exact zero for every point on the vessel - that's why the orbit works). And then there's still the issue with resistance of the joints (which should be quite high even for medium size parts), ruling out any amplification in reality (since no harmonic oscillating force is contributing to the harmonic oscillator, without even going about the force having to be bigger than the resistance in the first place).

I for myself do them if they sound funny or easy, otherwise I get my funds a little different: Research satellites around every body. This way you just accept those 'get science from blah' missions and switch through all your satellites collecting the money. Quite profitable and takes half a minute for each contract to fulfill (with higher margins as the test contracts, speaking efficiency here).

You did get me wrong there - 'specific data of value' isn't quite the same as 'specific data', but then I could've clarified (remind me not to post that early morning). Although the game is pretty able to file them in the R&D building, so I doubt it can't be checked by the system, even if you gonna have to do the query on the science building for '2/3/4 reports filed for KSC-Launchpad'

Stock doesn't provide the nodes for that. I would, if I had the chance. No, it's not. Prerequisite for a pendulum is freerunning suspension, and since all southern docking ports connect even before the first clamps are released there is no freerunning suspension any longer but a rigid linkage. Of course you could see the cross itself as a semi-4way-pendulum, but there's no force applied, so with all I know about physics (and that's quite a bunch) this shouldn't happen.

Since it all boiled up in the 50% throttle at launch thread I feel it's time to address an issue that annoys me every single time. I know you want to do the game as newbie-friendly as rocket science can get. I do appreciate that, although I'm quite used to actually learn new games without being bottle fed (and I don't do tutorials either, I rather lose my first game). This whole 'being friendly to newbies' might be the reason for your (otherwise almost never useful) half-throttle at launch and your constant reminders that goo and material lab isn't going to work a second time after taking out the experiment in EVA. At least it is a strong motivation for some guys here in the forum to dismiss quite a lot of nice suggestions, because one has to know stuff. Here's what I think would help new players, and wouldn't hinder/annoy pros in getting things done a more complicated but fun way: Keyboard mapping Guys, seriously? That's a BASIC in almost every game - hit ESC, go to settings, switch to keyboard settings and see what key does what (and change them if needed). Everything is already done - the only thing missing is the button in the menu. And now don't tell me that's a head scratcher, even if you do have to gray out all graphics settings because the engine isn't able to cope with such changes on the fly. Reminders/Pop-ups Good thinking. Sadly bad copied. I would like to see quite a lot of pop-ups during the game, helping newbies to know their way around. Go to the VAB, get told what this nice building is all about. Launch pad and a pop-up tells you how you actually start and fly your rocket, maybe even while pausing the game (for inflight tips). It all could be made to get rid of tutorials all the way (if that is a goal). But then you definitively don't forget the Holy Trinity of buttons: 'OK', 'More info' and - most important - 'NEVER show this tip again' (for I've seen it a hundred times now and I STILL want to take the experiment out of the Goo container - that's why I'm doing an EVA). And please do a 'don't show tips' option in the settings page. You want a perfect example for this: Sims 3. Small, helpful and not at all intrusive. Difficulty setting ATM you have 3 modes to play the game: Career, Science Sandbox and Sandbox. And there's people who suggest a Contract Sandbox, want science reports to work without having to do the science tree, complain about too much/too little money in career mode and so on and so forth. Have you ever played Civilization, Tropico, Anno, Star Ruler, Simutrans, Empire Earth...? All those games have in common they give you detailed options for a new game. You could do the same, let the gamer tick and alter certain parameters in the game, like Enable funds Funds to start with Enable refunds Multiplier on contract rewards [*]Enable science reports Enable Research Science points to start with [*]Dead Kerbal respawn [*]Hardcore mode (no 'revert flight' possible) [*]Enable stock rockets [*]Enable Asteroids Max. number of asteroids present I think this would satisfy most players, and most values are written to the persistent file either way. Share your thoughts!

Well, since first starters would a) play a tutorial like in any other game and not have done any scientific reading prior to the proposed contract, it would be of value (otherwise the contract would be retracted). Although I do like the idea of contracts asking for specific data of value, it's not the OPs intention (as far as I can read that), and I wouldn't like those null contracts be killed (they make such a good money grinder).

Well, doesn't help - been there, tried that. You have to disable gimbal and all direction control on the engine and fully operate with RCS/reaction wheels at that point. Although changing the code to check for COT/COM alignment to figure out how the steering should work doesn't seem to be hard work, but that's a whole other story.

No, the point is you first put a swimming ring on him in your bath tube, and afterwards you throw him in the atlantic to see if he's learned anything in his bathtube experiments. Because newbies too stupid to find a not magically working throttle indicator at zero a worthwhile cause to glance at the keyboard settings (while being safe and cozy on their launch pad) will screw it all up when accidentally touching/activating controls in hot mid-flight action. Because mid-flight is where you put your pansy-helping hand away. By the way: Isn't there a tutorial for flying? I mean, if someone deems himself ready for a go without having done the tuts he isn't allowed to whine afterwards because he didn't knew his way around. I advocate for a keyboard settings page in the options menu in game. It is your first (and only useful) helper for those problems in virtually every other game out there.

I got an idea how it might work: Give parts the possibility in VAB/SPH (like an additional trait) to act like the claw. Upon activation it is able to dock, but not allow transfer of fuel/electricity, and is easily ripped apart (say 1/10th of the force that is able to undock two junior clamp-o-trons). To actually weld the parts together you need a Kerbal on EVA doing that (maybe even with additional requirements in skill or equipment, if that's to come). This way you don't introduce new parts (which would screw the picture), wouldn't make the claw and docking ports useless and upon welding the trait is deleted so it is like there always was this connection, which wouldn't the engine allow to screw things up with phantom forces created by the part (as it is with docking ports). @CodatheSpaceFox Since I do that frequently and found the docking interface to be bugged/not being of any help whatsoever, I installed only one mod that gives you this working interface with correct alignment info and - very important - the right target without altering the game in any other respect: Docking Port Alignment Indicator. It still works despite being for v0.23.5. Does it work now? Last time I tried that the thrust vectoring behaved like normal instead of inverted (as it should when being in front of the COM), so my lander flipped the moment I touched the throttle or corrected direction.

I'm sorry, but that's not true. I get frequent science contracts, all on the line 'Fetch scientific data from orbit around XY.' To replace 'orbit' with 'Launch Pad' isn't breaking the current framework, it's just an environment setting that is checked upon filing the crew report anyways.

It's hard to tell with tutorials - either you do everything in tutorials, which will soon be a whole game of its own, or you do just the basics and leave out the complicated stuff. TBH the last tutorial I played was with Black & White 2, because you couldn't skip that bloody thing. On second thought I see quite some similarities between our two suggestions, although I'd prefer own research teams (all big space agencies do research on their own) and kill the time-related payment (reason: time warp forcing & progress hindering). But requiring additional data (just a bit) to research certain types of parts would really make that interesting and I guess fit quite good in my system. As for the financial management, I wouldn't like to see Kerbin economy based on ones space program. It doesn't make sense and is too much economy stuff over the core game feature: Building and launching rockets/planes and exploring other worlds. But if you want to base your funds on your reputation, there's another thread: A try on Perodic Budget Leave comments, share thoughts - good contributions and ideas are always appreciated (by most, I guess - there's the conservative party too, but you can't sit in everybody's car).

THIS! My strong opinion is that programmers kill systematically the need for logical thought in their users in an attempt to help newbies/b00ns/complete brainless keyboard smashing apes, thus producing the latter. IMHO we should dismount all signs that indicate obvious dangers and let evolution take care of the rest. People who don't actually start questioning how to control all those nice buttons and sliders they see at their screen should be forbidden to use a computer in the first place, for being the kind of people who also start installing stuff by just hitting 'Next' until it stops coming up because a site found with Google told them they're having registry problems. I work part time in IT support for two universities (supercomputing center) - you don't possibly want to know how stupid PhDs, professors, students and other folk are when presented with a computer. It's a nightmare, and helping them by doing fool-proof software (and I'm NOT talking input sanitizing here) makes it even worse. They strut in like being Linus Torvalds because they were able to follow a howto to disable the Windows UAC, and two minutes later it's all your fault because you found a whole ecosystem of malware and recommend the final solution. Everyone shoves the child away when it's trying to reach the hotplate - software programmers nowadays install a ladder and paint candy on it.

Well, I already did post something (not similar, but I guess it's a shot in your general direction): Research - a more realistic approach Although I like your idea of certain science reports being of more value to different kinds of research (one does not need the Goo information from Minmus to research a bigger booster which won't even see orbit), I too see a quite complicated science system (and trust me, I'm all in for complicated, realistic stuff) which will most certainly be too much for most players, not even talking about newbies. And I fear even simplifying this with contracts for the most useful information snippets won't help there (or will be too abstract for most players - some are even complaining about the proposal of adding a nuclear fallout reputation penalty for a crashed LV-N on Kerbin).

Nope, I got quite a lot: - realism (as stated before) - game depth (which means the feeling someone wanted to create a living virtual world instead of animating Excel simulations) - head scratcher for non-newbies (there are quite few atm) - more risk, more fun - breaking the line of thought where 'too little thrust' is always answered with 'add more/more powerful boosters' without any consequences Now what's your reason of rejecting, apart from 'it's not implemented'?

I was going for 'money per reputation' - wherever that comes from is entirely up to the player. That's what funds are in every game, but it all boils down to progress and prestige lateron. I have not played a single game in my whole life (and trust me, I've played quite a lot) where money didn't tick up to infinity at a certain point (if you knew your way around, that is). I see what you did there. It won't work, reason being pro players - we build rockets worth a million bucks, in the future possibly even more. If one can't really go above budget, you tie all people down. This is most stupid. Not exactly, but for all I've seen (did 10 rescue contracts until now) reputation for a safe landing diminishes like science gathered from a rocket. Last time I checked I got 0.3 reputation for one Kerbal landed safe in a pod (with small circular fuel tank and the smallest Rocktomax engine). Played it for 3 hours now without a peek into forum or wiki - it's easy. Only the AI is stupid as f*ck, which makes concerted attacks with multiple ships in one fleet a real pain in the ass (up to impossible). Yes, I do want AI to do stupid tasks (like refueling and replenishing), but not to override my commands all the time. If I say attack, I really want my ships to attack, and not fly back to a planet for a goddamn vacation. Funny though: Exponential growth is the key here, with differing costs. Not time warp. Humans can hardly extrapolate exponential growth, even if they work with it all the time (like me - microbes work the same, and still one is quite astonished how fast the buggers work up to gram or even kilogram scale from a tiny smear on the wall of the flask). It gets worse if the diminishing factors aren't clear and stable (which is always the case with automation and multiple construction sites/scales in Star Ruler). This is why you really suck in the beginning, whether AI sucks in the end (when your resources are way to plentiful for you to exceed them). This has nothing to do with time warp, which uses a predefined, never fluctuating compression of time, much like speed settings in Star Craft or other games. It all boils down to linear thinking, and that's where we're good at. The moment I say you'd be given 2 bucks a day in KSP you already know (or at least have a good idea) how much you will have in 10 months. It doesn't matter if those 10 months last forever or a second with time warp - you have a static set and linear growth, stuff you deal with a hundred times a day, even in situations where you don't think about it (like driving your car). That's why I think we have to avoid (for KSP) income/cost based on a variable that can vary continuously between 1 and 100 000. We're not discussing scientific hypothesis here - Ockhams Razor doesn't apply in this context. Simulating that (implied simulation) isn't out of reach for game design. You start to mix up my concepts with the implied real world background, which I just mentioned for the ones who don't see the logic. But that's a discussion which should take place in the blog and not here, since different topic.

Sure. And then there's no reentry heat, funny behaving water and stuff. Well, it's another universe, and as we all know physics is not what we want in this game. So why making an effort? I like the idea, it makes sense for ALMOST every living organism in every universe. After all we do want to think we're on a populated planet.

Based on where I am atm and with those suggestions applied 1 additional reputation point per week would reward me with 55k per week. If you think this is too little, multiply the reputation to money and money to reputation exchange rates by 10, or apply a procedual multiplier tied to your reputation (like the square/cubic root of your current reputation be your multiplier on the given values). You'll drown in money. That's what I do all the time atm. My periodic budget are two research satellites (the third to Minmus is on its way) around Kerbin and Mun, which I switch to, do a reading and transmit it when the 'get science from orbit around' contract is available again. And like I said, I'm doing a 2.4M Munar Lab Base with orbital assembly, and could easily do another one, even if I'd waste all my Kerbiane 40 A-1L/R-4L rockets. Watched one half hour video, showed pretty much everything. Do watch one of the (NuclearBadger8 is a total n00b, the time he finishes his 9th vid he's still trader or so, most of the better players have own productions then and are running for elderman, having won the last mayor elections being patrician in their home town) - there is no automation that you don't create and manage. Or go about (take a look at the time frames). I'm pretty sure you'll be amazed how complicated games can get - no automatic research and build/upgrade all buildings with only 3 resources at hand. Most people cry about my thoughts on the KSP research system - now that's damn easy compared to HOI, and even there the research is the least complicated part.So yes, I think I got the point - you're telling a German Economy Simulation Gamer something about complexity. But hey, I might give that game a shot - I don't think I will need a lot of time to work it out. R&D post? It's easy. The only reason you find that complicated is because I describe the internal working part - what newbies (and most other players) would see is a couple of buttons in a list with the financial cost, while other buttons are grayed out for you don't have enough knowledge to research them yet. Tell me this is complicated.

Okay, that's a method too.

Just to clarify: Nuclear jet engines need quite a lot of intake gas, it just doesn't have to have oxygen in it (for the reason you named). Also the idea to do a turbojet/turbofan engine with nuclear reactor isn't really impossible - the research on it was killed too early and with inferior materials at that time. Modern materials (ceramics, carbon (nano) fibers and other alloys) would probably circumvent or solve the initial problems of those early engines (one should not forget jet engines were 20 years old when those nuclear engines were stopped - we know a lot more now about them). As for the drop in efficiency at high velocities: I'm not sure if mach 7 actually is a deadline for those engines. Press enough air into the reactor chamber and give it only a small nozzle it won't cool the reactor down too much and still have insane outlet velocities. Within game I know it's not a deadline for turbojet engines (broke that with a test jet once), although they are not able to produce as much heat as a nuclear engine. I pretty much support the idea of a nuclear ramjet engine, but I'd like to see a nuclear turbojet engine as well (which then would be able to produce thrust with no initial velocity) Just an idea to reduce it's use in Kerbin atmosphere (for the reason it being overpowered): Forbid it. Seriously, forbid the usage in Kerbin atmosphere, for safety reasons, and drain reputation massively if it is actually used. Also one could add a reputation threshold for buying them - one has to have a certain reputation, otherwise no one would trust you with these materials.

Complexity in stuff you approach first when you're already progressed into deep space and such, or you try to optimize in the second/third approach while still staying functional for newbies without knowing how it exactly works. Like giving a learning ability to Kerbals, dive into their traits (add a few more & make them useful), redo the R&D system (I proposed something on those rails - you don't have to know how it works to actually use it, although it won't be most effective the first time), adding resources on other bodies, maybe a crane too, enhance the EVA system (repairing, welding, fuel lines, experiments), redo the funds system, introduce supplies, add a system for subcontractors (for supply chains in endgame etc)... This all will either not be affecting or will even help new players on their way to first orbit, Mun & Minmus mission and landing. Of course new rockets pose new challenges, but as I recall right once you worked out your first few orbits it's always the same - launching rocket, separate stages, refuel in LKO, progress further. The most interesting things then are bases (which lack stock functionality atm), Hohmann transfers, slingshot maneuvers, trying new designs and fiddle around with planes. Yes, this is why I'd love to see some financial/colonial/RPG management in late game - it would add to the experience.