StarStreak2109

And of course, the GSC++ is glitchy when using Rescale, as KKtoSD does not seem to work in the latest version of KSP...

Mmmh, just a wild thought here: wouldn't it be possible to convert that rover model of yours into one single part? Minus the wheels of course. Plop a small decouple into the rover bay, attach them wheels to the rover body and then the rover to the decoupler. The rover body could have the usual modules like command, reaction wheels plus one or two experiments. But since the most planetary bodies are rather slopy, I'd guess it would be frustrating to have the rover disappear in the ground all the time or have it floating in midair... Again just a suggestion...

If the rover is a static animation, how does it cope with undulating ground? If the ground is sloping up, wouldn't it go underground?

Agreed.

I don't use SRBs as structural members. I use SRBs as SRBs. But I agree with you, engines should have this option, if only as a safety measure against accidental activation. While we're at it, I also would like to have the option to toggle a preset for the thrust limiter on/off. This would be handy for those multicore rockets where the center core throttles down after lift-off and throttles back up after booster sep.

Hey, actually, I hadn't had much chance to dig into it deeper due to real life constraints... I have not thought of doing the math actually. My findings / prerequisites are still: KER and MJ deliver roughly the same numbers concerning dV for both LFO as well as LH2 engines. When using LH2 engines, the actual amount of dV spent during an in-space manouver is twice as high as stated by the manouver node system. Boil-off is deactivated all the time, so it should not factor in the calculations. I still have to try whether the root part has anything to do with it...

@SpaceMouse This looks awesome!

I personally have no problem with (the current) royalty free music at all. Apart from the fact that I turn off the music in most games (which is not the point anyway), I think that the current music in-game is kind of a staple of KSP. So removing or replacing it is IMHO not a good idea. There are three things IMHO that could/should be done: Should be done: Adding more variety of music in the same theme to have less repetition. Maybe even also add event/location-controlled music, as has been discussed above. Events could be reentry, docking, landing, launching, ... Locations could be per planet for instance with a distinction between landed, flying in atmo, flying in space above... Should also be done: The possibility of adding your own music into the "sound track" (disclaimer wrt streaming or uploading to YouTube necessary!) Could be done (optionally): Remaster / redo the existing soundtrack to better fidelity. Re the third point and all others asking for new, not royalty-free music: I do think that the expense necessary for recording better music, non-royalty free music, should better be invested into the games development. There are so many great artists out there (Kevin McLeod, Testshot Starfish, ...) that would probably be more than willing to contribute to KSP's soundtrack that I do not see the need for spending 1000s on a new OST. Having said that: This would indeed be an opportunity for a DLC, however much I dislike the idea. But this would be a way to recuperate costs of an OST, those who want the additional music can buy it optionally, as long as the option to add custom music into the game yourself remains a core game functionality...

I am not really knowledgable when it comes to game engines and game programming. But my understanding is that in order to make the scale of KSP happen in Unity, some pretty hefty hacks had to be employed to allow to calculate the player's ships physics on a small scale and the planetary system's physics on a large scale at the same time. This is also the heritage I think KSP has to cope with even today. On this note, I do not know, if this can be handled better by another game engine, but there are certainly examples of such within Unity, CryEngine or Unigine. Having said that, I still doubt KSP will be a thing, but if it is, I think it will have the advantage that its scope will be quite fixed from the beginning...

I am strongly against that. They are fun in Whatsapp and Discord, but have no place on this forum IMHO. Written communication can be hard enough to understand (and gauge your fellow users "true" intentions/feelings/state of mind). If you add a bunch of "pictures" into the mix, people will start to use them for fun and as pointed out by @Geonovast instead of words... As some people on here already have problems expressing, what they want to say in complete sentences, I am strongly against that.

I guess the issue is that real world "science" is not limited to point measurements. It is often long term observation and data analysis to "gain science points". There is one mod, that properly emulates that, and that is ScanSat, which forces you to have satellites in specific orbits, which observe the planet below until they have covered 100% of the surface. Another mod that emulates real science quite well is this telescope mod (forgot the name). But in the real world, we do not do "biome hopping" or the likes. Again, emulating a real world approach would be to have a satellite in orbit, which would then identifiy "science potential". This could be quantified for instance by certain geographical features (cliffs, ancient river beds, ...). These locations could then be targeted for a ground mission to exploit the "science potential" and gather "science". But grinding science by visiting every biome of every planet, and be it ever so lifeless and void of interest, is IMHO simply not realistic. IRL we also wouldn't drive a rover through the endless wastes of Mars, just to have been there. We would make a decision, which "biomes" would be interesting and land there. Further thoughts of game mechanic: Define objectives, what you want to learn about a specific planet (e.g. its history, potential for life, possibility for colonization / ISRU, ...). Based on the selected objective, regions with "science potential" must be identified via orbital scanning. In these target regions, landing missions or dedicated orbital analyses via more specific satellites are used to gather specific "science" that counts towards resolving the selected objective. Once your science count is high enough, the objective is fulfilled and you receive the information requested. Some of the information might just be used to expand the lore and others could be used e.g. as a basis for planning your ground base (e.g. what ECLSS requirements exist for that planet). This would also require that for instance you do not initally know e.g. the atmospheric make up.

As the others have said, I would retain the following items: All the science parts; Fuel lines; Struts; Landing gear; Landing struts; and Batteries; (and optionally) (Mk2 plane parts). For a more complete experience, also to fill up late game experience, I would add (some) of the following mods: Coatl Probes Plus; Near Future suite of mods, alternatively / along with Angel-125's mod packs (DSEV, Pathfinder, Buffalo, ...); For space plane purposes either OPT or B9, both accompanied by B9 procedural wings

I have never tried Kerbalism, although it sounds like an interesting concept. My personal opinion re MKS is very mixed. On the one side I like the underlying ideas, but overall I find the whole pack bloated and overly complex. I recently found that Pathfinder by @Angel-125 is a much more streamlined and user-friendly alternative to MKS, much like MKS Lite used to be.

Why are you guys clamoring for ways to throw away money all the time, especially for parts you already have... I remember, when the sheer mention of a DLC would cause an outrage...

Hi, interesting idea. I shall investigate that one! No, I have boiloff deactivated. Also in that short time span, 200% more fuel expenditure than projected at the beginning of the burn would be excessive, wouldn't you think?

Hello all, I am posting this here, because I have noticed some odd behaviour in conjunction with engines using liquid hydrogen (LH2), such as from the Cryo Engines pack by @Nertea or from BDB by @CobaltWolf. I am not posting the relevant threads, as I believe this is not a bug of these specific mods but rather something underlying, which makes these engines work. The issue is that with any LH2 engine, that I have used so far, the dV calculation within the game seems incorrect. This becomes apparent, when using a mod such as MechJeb and/or KER, which calculate the dV per stage and for the whole ship. Following please find some screenshots to illustrate what I am referring to: In the first screenshot, I am at the beginning of executing a manouver node of ~350m/s, I have 3,770m/s left in my rocket. You would expect that after the burn, you'd be left with ~3,418m/s. Instead, you end up with roughly twice the dV expended, with only 3,114m/s left in your rocket. FWIW, I installed KER as well, to see if the error can be traced back to some error with MechJeb, but this does not seem to be the case, as the remaining dV is calculated almost to the same value (#floatingpointerror) in both mods. Now, I do believe there is only one way to calculate the dV of a rocket, hence the error must be somewhere else?! I heard that others, @RocketPCGaming specifically, wondered about this inconsistency as well. As I have currently no idea, what might be causing this, I would like to stick some heads together to try and find the cause for this. As a start I would like to ask others, whether or not they have seen the same kind of behaviour and if so, was/is it similar to what I have seen (roughly twice the dV expended than anticipated) or was it a different kind of inconsistency? Your feedback will be very welcome!

KCT adds a time constraint to your rocket builds, thus preventing you from launching one rocket after the other. In career/science mode it also adds a further time constraint on unlocking nodes in the tech tree. You get points that you can distribute in order to emphasize the one or other aspect of your space program (e.g. building rockets over space planes or developing science over building stuff). You can further enhance this experience with the mod Scrapyard, which provides an inventory of recovered parts, which can be reused and thus keep your costs down. While these mods are great at adding said time constraint to your game, it really becomes interesting, if you add life support into the mix. Having to plan ahead to have for instance resupply drones available for your station in orbit, provides more of the kind of experience you may be after.

Agreed. What I meant by that rather snappy remark was that at the end of the day I don't care whether or not fulfills everyone's wet dream re parts that should be added via a DLC. I documented my position here and in other threads concerning DLCs. I am not buying anymore DLCs from Squad/ T2 if they are as half-assed as the last one. I appreciate that for some having a "mod" released by the devs of KSP might by favorable to any third party mod - although I am of a different opinion, but that's just it. As they are also underway improving the base game apparently, they should focus on that first, before putting out more DLC. Let's just hope they take the community feedback at heart.

What the others said. What would that accomplish?! Orion is basically an overengineered orbital ferry. If we ever went to Mars, we'd use a different interplanetary ship, which would support astronauts for the 500 or so days of travel to and from Mars. So nothing to be learned from such a stunt.

Yeah, I am 99% sure this is a Scatterer issue...

Indeed. Still not fixed in 1.4.5.

Then I can promise you that there will be people complaining how unrealistic it is.

Fully agreed , it does not make sense at all.

So do I! We (I) sorely miss him...

No way I want to go through the tedium of watching a crawler creep from the VAB to the launch pad. Besides it would create additional issues. The VAB doors would need to animate. We would limit ourselves to ships fitting into the VAB, be aus it would look like excrements, if the rocket would come out of the VAB whilst clipping the roof. The ramp to the launch pad is way to steep. TLDR, you would look at a complete redesign of core game assets. I would have my doubts, if they could even be remade in the original B9 style, given how the devs are set up these days. The only way I could imagine something like that is as part of a progress "bar" in conjunction with a stock implementation of Kerbal Construction Time. There's another thing, that is bugging me in this context much more. Why are there only these hideous "launch clamps" in the game? No launch tower nothing. These would be nedofor any kind of crawler...