M3tal_Warrior

I'd call it adding realism and complexity to the game, being good for both current and future players. The best games with highest replay value I've played in my whole life were highly complex games, for you find a zillion ways to do things more efficient/different. Of course it takes a lot more to learn the game then, but I guess the learning curve in KSP is quite good and the game values even little achievements in the beginning quite good, so players get a warm and cozy feeling while even blowing up the first rockets on their way to space.

Quite correct. The fuel in normal jet engines is used to heat up the incoming air (requiring oxygen to burn the fuel), producing pressure that's ejected through the nozzle (despite contrary believe it adds only little to the amount of molecules, where 1 mol is at normal pressure/temperature equal to 22.4 litres - if it wasn't for the heat it wouldn't work). There it propels a turbine which in return shoves more air into the combustion chamber, creating a self-sustaining air flow and thus thrust. Nuclear engines replace liquid fuel (kerosene) by a thermonuclear reactor core - it heats the air (to even higher temperatures than normal jet fuel, where higher temperatures and pressures propel at some point the creation of bigger molecules to reduce the amount and thus the pressure, diminishing the effectivity), the rest is the same as above. It would work in every atmospheric environment, even with noble gases (Helium would be best I guess, since there is no such thing as combination reaction even for insane temperatures/pressures). I'm not entirely sure if it would work in fluids, but if you'd adjust the turbines or use pumps for injection I reckon this would even work there - injecting small amounts of liquid in the core, heating that until it vaporizes and let it shoot out of a back nozzle. Only drawback would be the intense density and thus resistance/drag of a fluid compared to gases. So I guess you wouldn't be very fast, and look like having a serious flatulence problem.

You did. I made them to fit all your criteria in a way I see as logical and realistic. Hard work. Allowing a player to accept a contract failing (and not revert & try again) depends on the player - some like it the hard way, some will revert even for a couple of thousand bucks. You can't fit everyones desires, that's why the suggestion was a self-defined minimum base value for funds. I reckon I tried to fit the vast majority of players - making them accept a failed contract even if it eats through your small starter budget due to compensation by the government. Failing a contract and losing reputation in later game would just eat little money, and since the reputation loss for compensation money is applied one week later you have plenty of time to fix that until it finally takes that bit of your money. As for the grinding back - this is the nicest feature of my proposal: You don't have to. You're just rewarded if you succeed. If you're down on your luck, the government will help you. The reputation loss is never that big and most of the time easy to compensate, and even if you don't do that, you lose money only once (next payday), afterwards even a 1 point reputation gain within the week will give you the bonus money (the only way I can imagine this system to be exploited, by small reputation gains even at small stakes, but there's ways to prevent even that). Money for personal projects: You will have plenty. Trust me on that, I'm atm building a Munar lab base in Kerbin orbit, launch costs at 2.4M, and I still could easily do another one with my current funds. And I'm not even financially rewarded for the 1000 reputation or so. Late game players don't have a funds problem, and with that system even less. But I also don't see why I couldn't be just a question of balance. Right, that was intended. Late game players won't need to refill their budget, as they'll always have enough funds, newbies would do that even without noticing - a successful contract makes up for about 10 failures. Not really. One can simply add an equation that rules out reputation per time, by just calculating the reputation gain from those running contracts. Since ATM there is no such thing, I didn't add that. But like I said, it's a piece of cake. No, I'm not. But I can imagine how it works. Patrician 3 is - even without you using the timewarp - pretty soon the same. Once you produce enough bricks and wood to eat half your transportation capacity (and at later points you have to do that), are supposed to supply 20 cities on the map with 20 types of stuff, half the cities growing steadily, increasing production and need for supply and have to pay your employees (about 2500 atm) and taxes once a week (in my current game this eats ~200k gold, growing by 20k-40k per week, with a ton of beer being worth about 40 straight) - I'm used to one mistake throwing back production/progress of one or all cities for months. Lübeck (my main bricks production site) was besieged in early March, killing all my production and employees (about 500 + 1500 family members - half the population) - I'm in mid July, and still not yet back at 100% production capacity, despite gigantic efforts to shove (SHOVE, not lure, because it's way more effective) people into the city. Playing at lowest speed (which is necessary at this point in game) one day is equal to about 30 RL minutes, IIRC. So yes, I'm quite used to calculate production rates, progress and need for supplies for months in advance; my calculator is always located next to my keyboard. KSP is easy stuff, even with the proposed changes. I overproduce in every game, if possible. yepp, entirely different can of worms. Edith says: I guess I should do a blog post some time soon about this subject. It adds perfectly to my other suggestions.

I wouldn't call that grinding - it's a failsafe for newbies. Advanced players won't be able to work with 10k bucks - most of my rockets nowadays are 200k per launch (with the ability to recover about 50k, but nevertheless). Of course we can always say bare minimum is 5k or 1k - or, if you please, 0k, having to grind money doing contracts without a failsafe. It could be implemented as difficulty setting. My opinion is quite in favor of the concept - combining a newbie failsafe into a possible financial management system (like you suggested, earning money over time due to own actions), which could still be expanded with having to pay your staff, supply, maintenance and/or contractors. Come the day of frequent payments draining on your funds this failsafe could even be crucial to meet your obligations during time warp if you haven't planned careful enough. It is by no means something like a magic money grinding machine, more like the funding of NASA by the US Congress. That is, if I got the OP right...

Yepp, that mod explained stuff while I was researching - I am too sorry, boy, that I don't reload the page while writing. As for the website: I'm not able to speak/read Spanish - the same would occur to you if I'd provide you a German webpage. So I use what I can read and understand. Right, it would need quite a lot of money to change that, and a complete redesign of the signs, I do see the problem on the street. Alas I don't see it with volumes and weights. And national pride was the #1 reason I was told while being in the States a couple of years ago. Be it as it is, it won't change that soon, I reckon.

Well, Wiki lists them as indie video game company in the disambiguation page, and I'm quite confident they'd update that info if it wasn't correct. PR is part of being an indie game studio, since you're on your own regarding almost everything from development to publishing/selling.

There's much more to it: Stupid Kerbals make bad scientists, learn a lot slower and less (if learning is implemented one day), might slip on ladders or be less aware of dangers...

I'm pretty sure it's no Public Relations company, but we all know they're Mexican for sure.

To be honest this was quite often suggested, just search for space hangar. (got that one wrong, my bad) The wobbling won't stop with normal part joins, I'm afraid. I filed that bug a couple of weeks ago with my Kerbin Tank Station - it's phantom forces acting on the ships.

I get that. That's my type of game. I think we're about to say the same, but misunderstand the other guy completely all the time. ATM there's one way of losing money: Launching rockets. You can timewarp forever, it doesn't help you lose money. What you have is what you have. As far as I understood your concept, this wouldn't change. In your concept there are two ways of earning money: - Fulfilling contracts - getting financial help every week if below a certain amount of money The latter depends on reputation. The more you have, the more you will be given. Timewarp wouldn't change anything here. You expect one main problem: Gamers who actually make an effort raising their money aren't financially rewarded. This is easy to solve: Calculate the reputation change within the last week. You lose reputation, you will have to pay money (unless you are down on your luck, then you're raised to the basic funds again and lose reputation for that). Gain reputation, one is granted money for that. Example (time: T + 0 weeks): Basic funds: 10 000 (the bare minimum, you will always get that) Reputation: 0 Fulfilled 5 contracts, earned net 20k money and 50 reputation. Given 1 reputation gained/lost makes for 100 funds. Being given 1 000 funds cost 1 reputation, rounded. Time: T + 1 weeks Funds: 30 000 Reputation: 50 Reputation change during week: + 50 New basic value: 15 000 (10 000 + 50 rep. * 100 money) Money given: 5 000 (for making an effort and gaining 50 reputation during the week) Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value) New funds: 37 500 New reputation: 50 Time warp all the week Time: T + 2 weeks Funds: 37 500 Reputation: 50 Reputation change during week: +/- 0 New basic value: 15 000 Money given: 0 (no effort was made) Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value) New funds value: 37 500 (no change due to time warp) New reputation value: 50 (no change dure to time warp) Rocket launched, cost 30k funds, no reputation change Time: T + 3 weeks Funds: 7 500 Reputation: 50 Reputation change during week: +/- 0 New basic value: 15 000 (10 000 + 50 rep. * 100 money) Money given: 7 500 (to raise you up to the basic value) Reputation change: - 8 (you were below the basic value, lost 7.5 rounded to 8 due to being given money) New funds value: 15 000 New reputation value: 42 Time warp all the week Time: T + 4 weeks Funds: 15 000 Reputation: 42 Reputation change during week: - 8 (for being given money last week) New basic value: 14 200 (10 000 + 42 rep. * 100 money) Money given: - 800 (you lost reputation, that's 100 * -8) Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value) New funds value: 14 200 New reputation value: 42 Time warp all the week Time: T + 5 weeks Funds: 14 200 Reputation: 42 Reputation change during week: +/- 0 New basic value: 14 200 (10 000 + 42 rep. * 100 money) Money given: +/- 0 (you made no effort and were above the basic value) Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value) New funds value: 14 200 New reputation value: 42 ... This way you lose money for losing reputation, but not below the pure minimum of 10 000, are rewarded for achievements and good financial management without this being affected by time warp. Even negative reputation wouldn't make a difference other than just getting bare minimum funding. You can't go bankrupt, it's a self-stabilizing system. But let the government give you the bare minimum all the time will eat through your reputation constantly, which might pose a problem to you lateron, and more if it's used to hire Kerbals with good traits. I play a lot of highly complex management games (Patrician 3, Hearts Of Iron, Simutrans, Anno, Immortal Cities... - most of them do employ time warp, although not with such high factors used by KSP), I wouldn't mind being able to come down to zero or even debts, although Squad has already ruled that one out. Incidentally there's a nice feature already implemented that could be adapted to that: Contracts. Pay another company for supplies, repairs and maintenance for your stuff like sats, bases and stations - either grind money to afford those contracts, or do all yourself - it'd be your decision. That's where periodic budget would work perfectly, even with operation of comsats and other contract based stuff. The amount of micromanagement you want to do yourself would be all up to you. And I wasn't proposing a failure in satellites every second day - but once or twice in 10 years is a pretty good (and realistic) value, I guess. I am. I do pretty big bash scripts myself (1k lines of code and more), play - as mentioned above - quite complex games and love using my brain. That's why I am able to come up with those solutions. Give me a couple of hours and you get a code snippet in bash that calculates that.

I'm on an unmodded install (except for Docking Port Alignment, for the stock docking interface is bugged/useless), so I have no delta-v info, no mass info (except what I calculate manually) - I do it the hard way. But I'm not stupid and damn lazy, so at first glance at the science tree my question was: Where do I get better experiments to max out my science points? Second question was: How much do I have to spent on rocketry parts to deploy them? That's how I work - call it German Efficiency.

I know - I somehow require people to actually read stuff, despite seeing quite a lot of them acting like typewriting apes (e. g. bug reports for modded installs despite the sticky). OK, I tend to get nasty, sarcastic and ironic towards people too stupid to read, but that's just my way to give the needy a head-butt reminder. Well, never gonna give up. he meant you can't do an EVA in flight, due to atmospheric drag acting on your Kerbal blowing him away.

I back that - ATM I need to calculate my payload mass manually, and I hate that.

This is not a problem of the game but of communication. It can be solved easily, by just telling guys in the contract statement. This is actually a reasonable way (in the Kerbal universe, that is). This is why one does these nice ground tests first. Afterwards one knows how much TNT is to be used (about, with higher altitudes you need less). Would fit perfectly in my proposed system, I think.

Wait, you actually landed on the mun without having everything researched except maybe the LV-N? I have unlocked almost everything prior to my first landing. Gravioli research of Mun and Minmus is giving away thousands of science points without having to land a single time. Drop probes / planes for Kerbin with all 7 experiments in every biome do the rest. That's the only time I use tri- and quadcouplers. Maybe one small hop out of Kerbin SOI (to get HO Kerbol data) and you're done. I mean, yes, I landed on the Mun, and on Minmus, but with fully fledged 20 ton research rovers, including all experiments plus lab and 20k electricity on XL rover wheels. That was my first landing outside Kerbin actually.

I still don't see why this is a problem...

+1 for nuclear components requiring a certain threshold of trust/reputation to obtain, and too to the massive reputation loss if something nuclear crashes down on Kerbin. I just don't see the point of nuclear components actually costing reputation; why would you lose reputation when getting your hands on nuclear material and everything works out fine? As for Kerbals, there's a thread.

I personally like the idea of random failures for testing components. I just don't think they should be like exploding the whole ship (unless you're testing a tank), because that's ridiculous - you only have so much TNT in a decoupler, the only things that could possibly happen are: failed ejection (TNT doesn't blow) failed ejection (TNT is too weak to separate the stages) ejection with force being applied in a different angle, rotating your ship and such Same with engines. You should always be able to kill the fuel line, this is not an integral part of the engine itself. Engine not working, OK. Engine not responding to toggle, OK. Engine with not responding thrust vector, thrust slider, different thrust, ... perfectly reasonable. Even boosters can't really explode, reason being material density, thermoconductivity and reaction activation energy (sorry, guys, my job's talking here). Breaking apart, non-symmetrical burn profile, different thrust profile - now these are real life problems. I think this would add a really nice component to the game. Take my like for the general suggestion.

Not at all. It sounds difficult if explained, but you don't have to know all this to research. Newbies who don't read the manual click 'research' on 50 types of equipment/troops and wait until they're finished. After some years (ingame) they see their teams research stuff they've researched before faster. I have to admit not reading the HOI III manual will most probably result in getting behind other nations pretty soon, for a ton of reasons not involved in the science system. As for KSP I've had some thoughts how this could work. I think it's easy. I was a newbie to the game half a year ago, and I strongly object to that. Science and research is - to me - a core functionality of the career mode, I'd hate it to be like you want it to be. There is a mode for it, it's called 'sandbox'. As for 'unpar equipment' - there is no such thing. The first 3 rockets I build were used to unlock necessary nodes in the tech tree, so Kerb-01 to Kerb-03 were one time launches (glued together within a minute, if even). Kerb-04 is still used to shoot satellites into orbit, Kerb-05 to Kerb-07 for rescue missions, Mun/Minmus low-payload launches and as 'satellite family deployers'. These are all M-sized rockets. L and XL parts I solely use to leave the Kerbin SOI or to launch stations and suchlike. Like I said: You lack patience? Go play sandbox.

Why would someone do that? I'm pretty sure it's more easy to do a parachute than to assemble an engine. This so makes no sense, and will be an additional motivation killer for newbies.

We have that too - but who reads manuals anyway Hmm, there is a point, yepp. But I fear translating those contracts will require native speakers, the texts are too complicated (talking about linguistics here). If Squad has any sense here they would give that to the community, maybe naming the main translators in a special thanks page or so in return, or in easter eggs. Hell, why not, translating the game would be fun, I think, and for guys like me pretty easy. Young (university) students are required to be fluent in English, for it is the scientific language worldwide (for Chemistry that was different prior to WW2, but that's another story), and most people younger than 60 can speak that too, if they've not lived in the CSSR. Like I said, I don't really see the need, alas with the community it could be pretty easy to achieve. For me - being older - it was fiddling around with the computer itself, Registry, command line, ... Afterwards games kicked in, MechWarrior 2, HyperBlade, Interstate 76, Spy Game, Commandos 2, MDK. Pterry Pratchett did the rest (with the Discworld novels)

1. The potential user base has to be able to cope with the odd ends of orbital mechanics. This I'd consider works out for ages 14+. At this point almost everybody can at least have small conversations in English, having had that subject in school for 4 years (German school, that is, and I don't think other countries do that much different). So there is no 'expand user base' with localization. 2. Flight language is English. Even though Germany did a great deal of flight inventions we use mostly international words, although we do have words for all parts and functions. Hell, it took me 4 minutes to come up with 'Schubneigewinkel' for thrust vector. And I doubt more than 10% of the population is able to tell you what that means if you ask them to explain that out of the blue. 3. You know who's best in English in school around here? Gamers. Reason being: The moment we're able to understand English good enough to read and understand the mission statements in a game we buy the English version, for it is not censored. If I want to shoot .... soldiers I do like to see .... soldiers, and not soldiers in SS uniforms but weird flags (it's illegal to show the swastika in Germany outside a teaching/scientific context or art - computer games are not considered art). Also imagine playing CS:S without blood being displayed. So an English KSP teaches a lot, even language (and was by the way the first game/book in years that required me to use a dictionary/wikipedia again). As a non-native English speaker I honestly do not see the point of a translation into my language - if it comes, I will still use the international version, mostly because I don't care as long as I understand what the program is telling me.

Only useful if you plan to translate the whole program. Since that's quite a lot of work for a small game studio and the whole game is (I think) a bit too complex for small children it's not even necessary. I can't think of anyone playing this game and not being able to at least understand basic English (special stuff has to be learned either way; most people have no clue about orbital mechanics and the words describing it). Of course, in some distant future it might be translated, but I see no necessity atm to do so.

Nope, I want realism for the sake of being a little more difficult and being a lot more fun. If I don't want realism, I play a Lego game.

I don't see why it shouldn't work. It has ways to prevent going bankrupt during time warp, as well as possibilities to earn more each month/day/week/whatever. What use are funds if one can not possibly fall down to a minimum during time warp? To be honest: Once you got 3 sats up around Kerbin, Minmus and Mun you can get about 180k per hour, if not more due to the 'gather science from orbit' contracts. You can't go bankrupt without a way to earn money again, unless you're the King of Idiots. As for breakdown of sats: Sure, why not? If one breaks down, halt time warp with a notification, then one can easily fix up that sat again. In this case most of us will have repair crews in every orbit ready, I guess.