Jovus

There was a guy with a cool idea to reform the R&D system with prototyping and gathering flight data; I want to hear more from him.

I actually wouldn't call it cynical, exactly. There are very good reasons to want to retain jobs for aerospace-related fields in your own country rather than letting them drift off and, say, work for the Soviets. But we're skirting the line of the political here. One statistic I've heard from a guy who worked on the STS program, though I can't find his source right at the moment, was that for each Shuttle launch, there were enough people with PhDs working on it that they took up enough floor area to support three Shuttles, and you could have piled them four high. That might be a little off, or even a fair bit off, but the fact that we're even in the same ballpark of magnitude illustrates my point.

The Shuttle was very good at its job. It's job wasn't delivering payloads to space on the cheap; it's job was pretending to deliver payloads to space on the cheap while actually being a jobs retention program for people with aerospace-related degrees. You can tell this, for example, by the fact that the staffing and support requirements were way overstuffed. (Which, incidentally, is actually where most of the expense came in.)

One wonders if this is perhaps a reflection of Roscosmos' funding scheme.

They're just waiting to see if the kettle will boil over here.

So, funnily enough, it's been noted that enterprise software and gaming software aren't the same. This is true. If a spreadsheet program does math wrong, or a health record program crashes or returns wrong data, it gets fixed and fast, because there are potentially millions or billions of dollars on the line, and part of the agreement of buying a product line is also buying support for that product line. Always is, always has been, always will be. This is why, for example, until IBM picked up Red Hat, Linux was having serious trouble breaking into the corporate market: because if your OS broke, there was nobody's neck on the line for the damage. Fortunately, entertainment software does not follow the same paradigm. I say this is fortunate because we'd never get any if it did. We'd still be playing things volunteers hacked together and disseminated through back channels, explicitly with no claims of support. Games we all know and love are too complicated for that production model, KSP being a prime example. That said, looked at objectively, we do know that often, for games from reputable companies with a list of titles under their belt, there is some expectation of support. If you bought a game from Ubisoft and you simply couldn't play it at all on release day, you'd be up in arms. People would refuse to pay for the game and demand their money back. Complaining that people are doing the same with KSP is counterproductive. Maybe Squad isn't a AAA developer like EA or Ubisoft. But they released on the same platforms, with a game of similar complexity and similar price. Maybe you think holding Squad to the standards of aforementioned large game development companies is unfair. That's fine; that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. I'm partially of that viewpoint myself, frankly. But then, complaining that other people have buyer's remorse and/or plan to vote with their wallets is counterproductive. These people have already had an experience they consider unacceptable, and telling them they're wrong isn't going to fix it. Saying, "You shouldn't feel like that," is the equivalent of saying, "You're playing the game wrong," with the added presumption of putting your hand in the other guy's wallet.

Elon Kerman. For all the obvious reasons. In my save, he was generated without the BadS flag. Soon fixed that mistake.

Hey, thanks for making this thread! I've been wondering how to split quotes for a while, because that has never worked for me. Hopefully we'll get answers. As a crappy workaround that I'm not suggesting is a solution but will allow you to limp along in the mean-time, I've found that you can hit the quote button, copy the whole quote, including formatting, then strip it out by parts. Delete everything but the bit you want to respond to, then respond. Then paste in the whole quote again, delete everything but the bit you now want to respond to, then respond. Repeat ad finitum.

Yeah. That sounds fun...for a different game.

Okay, sure, whatever.

Frankly, this is a good point. If I had, for example, gone and bought No Man's Sky, messed around on it for a week, and then tried it again only to find out that there was such a large gamebreaking bug that all my progress was erased and I had to start all over again, I'd be pretty cheesed. I'd feel like I got gypped. (Apologies to any Romani in the audience.) In fact, I wouldn't go through the trouble of making a forum account on that game's forum and sending in bug reports, etc. I'd just tell all my friends that it was a bad game from a bad studio and they shouldn't waste money on it. Especially not $50 (or whatever the price of KSP is on PS4). Hey, thanks for that. It hurts when someone comes along and says, "Hey, this thing you love! It's a piece of crap!" So this bit is important for me. You're not saying KSP is terrible; you're saying it's terrible you can't play KSP because someone screwed up somewhere. You'd happily play KSP, but you can't. You're like us, only you're upset because you've been denied your chance. (Sorry for putting words in your mouth. If that's wrong, call me out on it.) This is an important part too. Those of us who've been around for a while - since, say, at least 0.25 - are kind of still in the alpha expectations stage. We've grown used to the way Squad handles its development cycles. We don't exactly like that Squad releases seriously buggy software - see comments above - but we're used to it. Somewhat. Compare: if a new expansion to WoW comes out and it makes the game unplayable to even 1% of their playerbase, that's an all-hands-on-deck nobody-goes-home-until-this-gets-fixed emergency. In this way, Squad appears still to be behaving like a indie game studio with a playable alpha. Which is a thing they aren't, anymore. Further, understand that, because of Squad's 'unique' approach to development, these forums have seen a lot of heat and light over their existence. So people around here who are old hands generally fall into two camps: the 'I told you so,' camp, (of which I'm often one), and the, 'Stop ragging on Squad all the time,' camp. It's almost an automatic reaction at this point. It's no even that the first crowd thinks Squad can't do things right or the second thinks they can't do things wrong. It's just almost habitual at this point. (And for reasons. I'm not calling anyone irrational here.) I'll say a couple things in Squad's defense. First, a large part of the botch is Flying Tiger's fault, not (directly) Squad's. Now, I don't know how legally or otherwise this works out. Maybe in order to get KSP onto consoles, they had to give Flying Tiger a lot more legal responsibility than they want to let on. Maybe not; maybe Flying Tiger is effectively just a sweatshop subcontractor. I don't know. What I do know is that this does partially absolve them, but there's the quite reasonable objection that, hey, maybe they should have gone with someone more reputable than a group of guys whose product line looks like this. Secondly, to my understanding, a large part of the problem with pushing fixes out in a timely manner (and indeed, with release in the first place) has to do with the way the consoles regulate their available content. The whole console release in Europe thing is mind-boggling to me; maybe there's a similar, smaller problem going on here. If Squad were Ubisoft, I'd think they should have this ironed out and know the process, but when it's the first time you've done something, sometimes it's hard to know what you don't know until you trip over it. Finally, for all we know maybe Squad is as frustrated about this as you are. They're obviously trying to help. They're just as obviously not getting it resolved in the seriously drop-everything-and-stay-awake manner this might call for. That might not be their fault, in the moment. A little patience might go a long way. Hopefully. Still, again, I think you're ultimately right here. You shouldn't have to have a little patience when you pay $50 to play a game.

I feel like we might have a slight misunderstanding about what I'm proposing regarding the bidding system. Maybe we don't and you just don't like it, which is fine. But I'm going to try again, just in case. What I'm envisioning is a sort of 'build your own contract' system where you specify to a large degree what you want to do. This could be highly specific, e.g. I want to put a fleet of satellites around the Moon as part of a mapping effort requiring three sats with polar orbits and telescopes on them. This could be very general: I want to go to Duna. The computer takes that input and generates long-term paying contracts (like discussed above) that meet your criteria, and perhaps exceed them in certain ways. For example, you've specified you want three satellites; very well, it tells you the exact inclinations, adds some more instruments, and requires a mission lifetime of five weeks. Or, you want to go to Duna: it tells you it wants you to take reports from three different biomes with the thermometer, and land a rocket capable of reaching LDO with three kerbals and a payload of five tons. It does this a few times based on your input, and generates some small number of 'contracts' with different requirements, payouts, timelines, and penalties, all satisfying your criteria and based around your current reputation. Then you pick one. And you're off to the races. That's it. That's the core of the idea. The whole thing about tweaks for multiplayer is just that: for multiplayer. And frankly, I'm skeptical that a working multiplayer mode will ever be released for this game. I agree that having some kind of faux competition with the computer would be either boring or frustrating and definitely not fun.

You do now. I'm proposing a system where I only build the things I want to build, and I only fly the things I want to fly, and KSP doesn't tell me I have to do something I'm bored with in order to do something fun. If you don't want to use such a thing, don't. There's plenty of incentive not to built into the idea; it costs more, you don't have full control, there could be other mild negatives, whatever.

I pretty much completely disagree with your vision for a career mode revamp. However, I'll comment constructively on one part that might be cool. I like the idea of designing payloads for pre-built launchers. However, I want some payoff for doing so. My probable workflow and incentive looks like this: I want to get a satellite up and into a specific orbit. However, I'm bloody tired of launching satellites around this body, because I've done it fifteen million times. (Looking at you, Kerbin.) Instead of doing it myself, I look through my subcontracting options. There are a few other companies that are offering lifters with these given capabilities (X tons to LKO, Y tons to KSO, Z tons to TMI, capable of inclinations between alpha and theta). I choose one that meets my needs. It also has payload restrictions because of the fairings and launch facilities. I have to build my payload to fit n meters in diameter and g meters tall. I do this. I specify a desired orbit within the parameters. I pay the monies. Voilà, my satellite is now in the requested orbit. No muss, no fuss, and I pay a premium for not having to launch it myself.

Sure. We can haggle about the complexity and the options. I'm not married to anything except the base concept. I want to do a thing, so I tell people I want to do a thing, and they pay me to do it, instead of the current model of they want a thing done, so they pay me to do it, and if I don't want to do it, I don't get paid. Personally I like the higher complexity, because it lets me tailor what I want to do and still have the game support me. "Go to Dres and hop around," or, "Go to Dres and recover or transmit science from three different biomes," might get old if that's all I can get the system to pay me for on every other body as well. Also, as a small symbiotic benefit that I've mentioned before, this bid system could be used in multiplayer (because that's coming, right?) to add a little spice and conflict to the game; people compete to underbid each other for the good contracts. Unless that's not your cup of tea, which is understandable.

Strategia is good. I recommend Strategia. You should use Strategia. Strategia has limitations. The way contracts are now, you take a contract for a job, you do that specific job, you get paid, you take another contract. It doesn't provide much structure for progression. Here's what I'd like. Contracts are time-limited agreements to complete some level or number of goals in exchange for quarterly (or weekly, or yearly, or whatever) payments of an agreed-upon amount. What are these goals? Depending on what kind of space program you want to run, they could be, 'put up a satellite constellation', 'create and maintain a functional orbital platform', 'prototype specific or area-limited new technologies' (like rocket engines; you might get a contract that pays for you to unlock five new engines), 'explore this celestial body' (with all sorts of different possibilities, from number of biomes landed in to number of satellites orbiting in sensible orbits), 'develop a new launch vehicle with these specs', or something else. In order to get a contract, you bid for it through the admin building. You go, "I want to explore Eve," so you put together an "explore Eve" contract with various parameters helpfully defaulted - how many landings in what different biomes, how many kerbals to walk the surface/plant flags, how many surface samples to return, what experiments to do, whether there will be return missions, etc. - and how much you want to get paid for this. The higher your reputation, the more likely you'll get paid more, and the more complicated you can make the mission. With low rep, they won't believe you can do a Jool-5 mission; with high rep, if you want to do a complete grand tour you'll find people willing to finance it. If you bid too high for too little complexity, your offers should be few, and perhaps not meet your standards. Maybe the counteroffer gives you less money. Maybe they also want a couple of other things done along the way. Maybe something else. Failing all else, Jeb's Junkyard will always accept your contract, but the terms will be fairly crappy and the rep gained may not be offset by the rep hit from contracting with the Junkyard. If you bid too low for too high complexity, of course you'll get a wealth of eager offers. As you can imagine, that carries its own problems. If we want, we can also keep the current contracts system in a reduced form. If you want you can always go pick up a simple sat launch contract; but that won't be your primary way of making money. Instead it just gets you through tight spots. (Of which there should be some, but that's outside current scope.) I can imagine this system would be a pain to implement, but it nicely fixes the random nature of contracts. No more contract roulette, and no more being pulled in a direction you don't want to go, therefore lapsing into 'boring' and 'grindy.' (I feel ya, OP. I always bog down right around the time I send my first probe to Duna.)

At the same time, the Gemini was colloquially known as a "Gusmobile" because the seats and controls were made to fit him. Which was a problem, because he was one of the smallest astronauts involved. So said capsules were very uncomfortable for most everyone else. http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/flying-the-gusmobile-218187/?no-ist=&page=1

I like the bit where he either used 1.0.5 or tweaked the radiator configs to have them face-on to the Sun. Also, the idea of a Type 2 civilisation using NERVAs is highly amusing.

Let's all sing the Carnot efficiency song! ... Sadly I can't find it.

Thanks, Magnamoe. You just gave me an idea. I've always wanted a sustainable Eve base without mining. Assuming they use LS or ore/fuel as a proxy, that means regular deliveries, or an ISRU. For style reasons I don't want an ISRU in Eve's atmosphere, but how do I sustainably deliver supplies? After all, for every delivery I'd have to bring back the tank, or just let it linger there in ever-accumulating piles. Bringing the tank back is hard and kind of defeats the purpose. I shudder to think about trying to design the SSTO (for reusability) from Eve that can also bring back an (empty) orange tank. Solution: don't use tanks. Drop asteroids on the base.

There are no gods. There is only the Kraken. The Kerbals live in a strange and cruel universe, beyond the worst nightmares of our human Lovecraft, for even he admitted the existence of human gods, albeit weak, poor and capricious, but the Kerbals have no-one except the cold, horrific maleficence of the one who waits in the darkness. The primal gibbering between the planets, the unintelligible voids and weird, unnatural spaces. The utter remove and inaccessibility of the other stars, despite the false and taunting promise of infinite speed, thrusting them ever deeper into the soft velvet grip of madness. There is only the Kraken. Sooner or later all saves are abandoned...or worse, corrupted by his blind, groping touch.

Excellent, the plan continues apace! Soon enough our percentage of Squad devs who like numbers will be high enough to have influence over the design team, and then, on to Phase 2: implement... THE DELTA-V INDICATOR!!!! Muahahahahaha! And no-one suspects a thing, except that pesky eddiew...

Capture should be rare, though, and it sounds like there might be significantly more than one. Time to start noodling around on alternate formation theories?

Technical Cast in 45 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OERDIFnFvHs Or there's the hosted cast: http://www.spacex.com/webcast

Other possibilities include weather and wanting to get it into place without having to wait for the Earth to line up underneath because you missed the first opportunity.