jdcr

Thanks jimmymcgoochie! It was classified as Debris. Didn't think of that. Quite a weird design decision imo. The thing had a working probe core, power, and antennae. And the quest lore characterised it as a working albeit ageing craft. I don't see why they would classify it as debris.

I accepted one of the new contracts in 1.11 (see image), thinking the game would place the satellite into my save. However, upon arriving at Minmus with an engineer and the required part, there was nothing there. Is it supposed to be one of my own satellites? If so, how do I identify it? None of them are named anything resembling the name given in the contract.

I applaud this. Fixing bugs is what KSP needs most in my opinion. I started in 0.23.5 and while KSP is one of the best games I've ever played, my experience has been steadily declining ever since, as more and more bugs accumulated. From slightly annoying stuff to core functionality-affecting to complete breakdown which finally made me abandon the game altogether. I'd be very happy to return once I can play it without constantly being annoyed by stuff not working. Honestly, I wouldn't even be bothered if no new features were introduced (or even if some feature were to be removed) in exchange for fewer bugs. (But I know that's probably an unpopular view.) Cleaning up the bug tracker is a good first step. I've always felt that it was a valuable resource that's been unnecessarily ignored by the devs. Every single bug I've ever encountered in KSP had already been documented by other players and in most cases these reports have been kept updated over months and years whenever a new version of the game arrived. Sure, I've noticed some instances where players filed a bug wrongly because they didn't understand the game (or physics) and some bugs are more like feature requests. But that shouldn't keep you from taking advantage of the amazing work that people have been putting into this (and still are). I hope that the cull will make the tracker more manageable for the devs. Although I have a slight feeling that perhaps KSP just does have that many bugs. That's just my very subjective impression though. Anyway, I wish you all the best for your work!

Yes, thanks! I mean it would be nice if there was a better directory chooser dialogue, but I'm guessing this is Mono's fault not yours. Now that I know which file I can edit manually, it's all fine by me. Regarding the order in which CKAN looks for KSP installs, imo that's a matter of personal taste. If you said that steam-first-currentdir-second was intended behaviour, I would accept that, too.

I just tested that and it seems that if there is a valid Steam install and the registry key does not exist, the Steam install gets picked over ckan.exe's directory.

You are exactly right. I thought I had set up my system to always run .exe with mono but apparently the console still uses wine, whereas the desktop correctly takes mono as a default. When I start the GUI via wine, I find exactly the values that I entered on the console and if I use mono ckan.exe on the console, I get to set the path for the mono GUI version. Rather embarrassing that I didn't think of that. Anyway, thank you all very much for your help!

Yes I could, but I'd rather understand what the program does to my system. The fact that it seems to store information where I can't find it makes me very uncomfortable. After all, it doesn't have an uninstall routine other than "just delete ckan.exe and the CKAN folder". I'm also confused why a KSP installation added via command line doesn't show up in the GUI. This is either a bug or my understanding of CKAN is completely wrong. Edit: Ok, turns out the GUI version stores its known KSP instances in ~/.mono/registry/CurrentUser/software/ckan/values.xml. I am able to manually add instances there. I still have no idea where the command line interface stores its values.

I have a few quick questions about the KSP installs management of CKAN on Linux (Mint 17) and would appreciate it if anybody could help. Here's what I did: I have one KSP install in the standard Steam directory (/home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program) and another one which I would like to mod (/home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program Modded). I downloaded ckan.exe and put it in the second directory. Unfortunately, CKAN only finds the first install (as expected), but I can't get it to recognise the second one. The problem is that the directory selection dialogue (a standard Mono window I suppose?) doesn't show hidden directories (.steam) and it doesn't allow entering the path as text. It's basically this bug, only on Linux. So I tried adding the second install via the command line: cd /home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal\ Space\ Program\ Modded ./ckan.exe ksp add Modded /home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal\ Space\ Program\ Modded Added "Modded" with root "/home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program Modded" to known installs At first, this seems to work: ./ckan.exe ksp list Listing all known KSP installations: 1) "Modded" - Z:/home/me/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program Modded However, when I start the CKAN GUI, it only has the "auto" KSP install (pointing to the default Steam directory which I would like to keep vanilla). So here are my questions, also TL;DR: Are there separate settings (in particular the list of KSP installs) for the GUI and the cli versions of CKAN? Where are those settings stored? Can I manually edit them? All I can find are "CKAN" directories inside both of my installs, but as far as I can tell after a quick scan through the files, none of them contains this information. Where does that "Z:" in "ckan.exe ksp list" come from? Is it a Mono thing? I don't like that CKAN (despite residing in my second install) puts stuff into my default install. I hope I can just remove the CKAN directory there and it's all gone. Right?

In my opinion that sums up the current career mode perfectly. In the end, I'm not even sure if it's possible to solve the career mode problem. Maybe KSP is inherently sandboxy. But that's why I appreciate new suggestions.

I beg to differ. Orbital mechanics is just one of the things (albeit an important one) you have to learn in KSP. Others are, just to give a few examples: dealing with the atmosphere (during both launch and return), construction (highly non-trivial, look at videos of beginners playing KSP), planning ahead for a mission (staging, docking, finding good ways to split up your ship into landers, transfer stages, return capsules etc.), understanding the science system (finding the context menu in the first place, then learn about biomes, find hidden things like EVA to hold multiple crew reports), and many more. Not to mention flying the things, which is something I still struggle with, after [some 4-digit number] hours. That might become the case in the future if Squad adds meaningful tutorials. Right now, career is the default selection, indicating that beginners should start there. The point is, career on easy difficulty could be made into a good starting point. It doesn't have to be, there are of course alternatives. In any case, I don't think sandbox is the right mode for beginners. At the moment, I'm recommending science mode. In sandbox, people build ships that are way too large (if they can find parts that fit together at all) and then run into stuff they cannot possibly resolve without knowing about struts and fins and center of mass/drag etc. I'm not sure how I feel about the solar system changing, but I do like this. Finally, a use for launch escape systems!

Why not? It flattens the learning curve which in a game like KSP is not a bad thing. Or you can solve it differently, for example by unlocking a bunch of parts each time some basic goal (touching space, getting into orbit, landing on the Mun etc.) is reached. That way, you still have some progression without having to learn how to earn science, which by the way is not very intuitive for beginners.

I like it. Sure, there are a lot of details to be figured out and tweaked, but the general idea of adding complexity instead of grindiness is great. It's always been one of the main problems of career mode that the "difficulty" is mainly more grinding. At the other end of the spectrum, no matter how far left a beginner puts the sliders, if they haven't figured out the science system, they won't get anywhere in the current career mode. Of course seasoned Kerbonauts like us would probably always choose the hardest setting and I see nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, the fact that even the best players usually go with normal settings, is a strong indication that there's something wrong with career in its current form. There are more things that need to be fixed in career mode (e.g. the balancing, especially towards the end game), but your suggestion is a good start. PS: I really hope science mode will stay forever. The more I play career the more I'm convinced that science mode is the "real" KSP game. I mean we dream of working for NASA because we want to build and fly cool stuff, not because we like accounting, right?

I know many people are anxiously awaiting multiplayer mode for KSP. To be honest though, I'm not sure I would play it a lot. The thing is, however well it works and whatever ingenious ideas are used to solve the time warp issue, space is still really really big. Apart from some relatively rare occations where you meet up with other players (which is already no easy thing to do), you will still spend most of the time alone. I can see it working with planes, but I mostly play Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Aircraft Program. However, there's another kind of multiplayer that I would really enjoy, and that's having multiple players in control of the same ship. I know that sounds stupid at first, but imo KSP is a lot about learning (and teaching). Wouldn't it be great if an experienced player could act as a driving instructor on your ship, give advice in real time and take over control if necessary? I've been in this situation quite of few times. Right now, the best solution is to either use some streaming service like Twitch or Steam (resulting in horrible delay) or use a desktop sharing program like Teamviewer (with horrible quality and sometimes also delay). An in-game sharing feature should work much better since there's actually not that much information that has to be transmitted. Such a "Mentor Mode" wouldn't have to be limited to flying, it could also work in the VAB. Of course there are details to be worked out (Like for instance how would one player hand control over to another? Or should one player's input always overwrite the other one's?), but I see no major technical obstacles. What do you about this idea? Has anything like this been suggested to and/or been taken into consideration by the devs?

I've had this error a lot since 1.0. It occurs when switching to or from certain ships. It only happens with two or three of my ships, but for those it's really frequent, often taking 2-4 reloads to make the switch. I'm not quite sure what's particular about these ships. They're large(-ish), but so are others that don't cause this kind of crash. I thought it might be a clipping issue, although I don't clip excessively in the editor (just lights and such stuff). Win7 32, Steam version, no mods except KER and KAC.

Are you talking about the purple one (i.e. the target marker) or the yellow one (target-relative velocity)? The latter has been always been acting up, as far as I remember. Although I think since 1.0 it's become a lot worse to the point that at times the navball is pretty much unusable. (Sadly, that can be said about a lot of things since 1"I'm not early access any more".0) Sometimes it helps to briefly go into time-warp, so things keep still and you get at least an idea of where stuff is pointing.

First of all, thank you both for your answers! That is very interesting. Do you happen to know if there's a list somewhere with the different kinds of contracts and their specific conditions? If not, is it perhaps possible to extract this kind of information from somewhere inside the game directory?

I'm sure there must be some info on this somewhere on the web, but I can't for the life of me find it. So...how exactly does KSP decide what contracts it offers to me? I'm assuming they're chosen randomly from a pool, but what exactly goes into that pool at any given time? Reputation seems to be involved but is that the only criterion? Does the status of my research facility matter? If so, in what way? The parts I have researched seem to matter at least indirectly. For instance I never got asked to launch a satellite equipped with part X unless I had researched X first (unlike testing contracts where you get early access to the part in question). It would be great if someone could answer this (admittedly very broad) question or point me to where I can read up on that stuff. The wiki, by the way, doesn't know anything on the matter.

That corresponds to what Scott was saying in his video, although I didn't know about the repeatedly relaxed winning conditions, so thank you for that. I guess the savegame is not for download anywhere. Well, nevermind luckily there's lots of other stuff to do in the kerbalverse.

Yeah, I'd like to try that, too. Couldn't find it anywhere though.

Thank you guys, it's good to know I'm not the only one who's concerned about these issues! Wow, I have no idea how I managed to miss that thread. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Given this, I have to take back some of the things I said, like it being a statement only made on tumblr and not on the official KSP site. I will have a more thourough look at this thread and your PDF. I'm not a lawyer either, but I'm sure you can sue both in the country of the copyright owner and the one the supposed offender lives in. Plus any other country that recognises some form of intellectual property and doesn't forbid lawsuits between foreigners who could sue in their own countries. I think the US always works. I don't think it would. Where I live, whatever the website says is irrelevant just because it's not signed. Apart from a very limited number of things (like EULAs which you have to accept explicitly by clicking a button or standard business conditions hanging in a shop's window) every contract needs either to be verbal and have a witness or be in writing and signed. Again this depends heavily on the jurisdiction in question, but I guess no matter where you are, a good enough lawyer would manage to invalidate some statement on the website, especially when it's unclear and contradicting others.

No of course it isn't and I think I made it clear that I'm more than willing to do so. (Whether it should be in the video itself or in the description (or both) is a good point by the way, and another one Squad might clarify.) I don't think I'm overthinking it, given that according to the blog post things aren't nearly as relaxed as the FAQ might suggest. The obvious, non-overthinking position clearly is "It's copyrighted, EULA doesn't allow using it, so you can't use it, period". I like it. Now the question is, will you allow me to use that?

Well, I think it's actually the other way round: the more viewers you have, the less you need to worry. See TotalBiscuit vs. Garry's Incident. The really big channels like Scott Manley's might even have explicit permission by Squad (I'm obviously guessing here.) But as I said, my main concern is not not being caught. It's not wanting to do anything illegal. And respect the developer's wishes (if only they could express those a bit more clearly). Therefore I think it's reasonable and in the interest of small channels to ask Squad to clarify their policy.

TL;DR. Squad, please create an unambiguous, consistent set of rules or conditions under which material from KSP can be used in Youtube videos or other forms of publication on the web. Put these in a single and easy to find place. Create a policy for how these rules can be changed. I'm trying to keep this as short as possible, but it's a complex subject. Here we go... I've seen a lot of KSP videos on Youtube (gameplay, tutorials and others) and I thought it would be fun to make some of my own. However, having looked at the legal situation, I don't think I can. In the FAQ it says: This sounds encouraging. However, the EULA does not allow me to do so. In fact, the paragraph titled "4. COPYRIGHT" explicitly says that no such rights are granted. Between these two conflicting statements, I'm pretty sure the EULA legally wins over an informal FAQ answer. But let's assume for a moment that somehow Squad considers the FAQ overriding the EULA. Next, in a recent tumblr post, Bob mentioned working on copyright issues (consider this my contribution to the debate by the way). I really appreciate you're thinking about these issues. Well, I go on reading and find this: Wait, what?! First of all, you did? How exactly should I have known? I tried to google, but couldn't find any quote by Squad asking us not to use "Kerbal". So, if I hadn't accidentally stumbled upon your blog (which is not even on the official KSP page), I would never have known. To me it's a bit frightening to see a widely visible "Sure, go ahead!" and then find a massive restriction hidden on tumblr. It makes me wonder what else I have missed. I think this clearly shows that there needs to be one central and easy to find page (preferably on the official KSP website) where you put all that stuff. Second, what exactly do you want us to call Kerbals in user-generated content? I imagine KSP videos that never use "Kerbal" must be pretty awkward. Also it outright contradicts the FAQ because how can you give proper credit without using the word? ("All rights to Those-who-can't-be-named Space Program belong to Squad, buy it on their website at http://www.INSERT-K-WORD-HEREspaceprogram.com"?) Note that they explicitly said "use of the phrase Kerbal in user-generated content", so this is not about selling products under the Kerbal brand (which they quite reasonably don't allow). Again, this calls for a single (non self-contradictory) set of rules for using KSP content. Don't get me wrong, I understand that Squad have to protect their IP and I appreciate the fact that they allow users to make web content (many other publishers don't). I also understand that they might be hesitant about giving a legally binding permission to youtubers by putting it in the EULA, as this would mean giving up a certain amount of control in case someone does something awful with KSP (which according to rule 34 must already have happed, but I'm afraid of googling that). On the other hand, not having a legally binding permission to use KSP material under certain conditions puts users under permanent threat. For instance, the rules might change at any time and users who published content may suddenly and without warning be threatend with persecution (in some jurisdictions even retroactively). Thus, my second request to Squad is this: Give us some assurance to notify us when you change the rules so we can act (i.e. take the content down) or to first ask people to take down their material before starting legal action. Finally, let me address two points which I'm sure will turn up in this thread sooner or later: First, the concept of "fair use" does not exists in most parts of the world. So bare in mind that these problems concern some people (continental Europe) more than others (US). Second, to those who will say "But everyone does it, the publishers won't complain because it's free publicity". True, in the majority of countries copyright infringements aren't prosecuted unless the copyright holder asks for it (it's still illegal though). Thus, the probability of getting in trouble is low, assuming (which I do) that Squad genuinely wants user-generated content of KSP on the web. Unfortunately company policies can change and franchises can be sold. Plus, risk is probability times potential loss, and the latter ranges between four figure sums and prison. In other words, the odds might be in your favour, but are you willing to bet your house on that?