tater

This is not just Windows, I had the exact same thing on mac OS.

Sure, why not?

Yeah, I was in the "you just flipped "heads" 50 times in a row, it's still random" camp when people first reported this. Then I had a career with ZERO male rescues, VIPs, or tourists. A career that filled the entire tech tree. I made a point after a while of rejecting nearly every single such contract (accepted several, just to make sure it was't related to the same contact being replaced with a new one with the same gender). After that did;t generate any males, I started a new career.Same thing. Then another. Same thing. It strains reason that 4 careers in the same setup with no career/contract mods aside from Asteroid day (if it has any) would all generate many hundreds of exclusively female contracts.

Yes, but those conditions are NOT similar, and I explained why, in detail. Your argument is exactly "wings work on earth, so they should also work just as well in space." The path length is exactly what matters. Shooting a laser within a sandstorm is NOT the same as shooting one though no air, then through a couple meters of sandstorm. 50 kg of sand is a GIVEN. That is a traveller sandcaster reload. You are welcome to calculate what volume of space you can cover to exactly replicate a terrestrial sandstorm (including atmospheric effects) with 50kg of material to work with. Then we will know how much of a ship we can protect. If it is less than 100% of the (player-sized) ship, then it's not right. I gave the benefit of the doubt and only used a Scout Courier which is just under 40m long (I think its 37), but it works for all ships under 1000 dtons. Another example that is EXACTLY analogous to what you are saying. The earth's atmosphere slows a projectile via drag. We can measure the range of a bullet's effective (can still kill) range. Say it's 2000m for argument. Can I release air into space next to my ship, and stop a bullet? Sure, If I add the gasses so that the bullet goes through 2000m of that same density of gas. What if my canister of air only makes a sphere 100m thick? I'm not stopping the bullet, I'm just going to slow it during that 100m. I found a reference to a sandstorm covering 134km^2, and carrying 6.5 million tons of sand/dirt. They did not list the altitude. Assume it is 8km high (26,000 ft), that's around 6 kg/m^3 of dirt, so our sand canister would have to deploy to a 1.26m radius sphere to match that density. The volume is a cube, so we need a LOT more sand to make this radius reasonable to cover a ship, then we still need to decide how far into the sandstorm the laser penetrates. Untrue, and that is not a straw man. A straw man is making a fake argument that the opponent did not make that is easy to defeat, then defeating it yourself. If the opponent makes such an easy to defeat claim, and you defeat it, it's not a straw man. You are arguing that the fact of lasers not being effective in sandstorms is exactly the same as traveller sandcasters in space, even though they use very small amounts of sand. Your argument IS easy to defeat, I am not putting words in your mouth at all. We have 3 givens. One, 50kg of "sand" to make your defense. Two, it must be possible for this to be 100% effective much of the time vs at least a single laser. Three, the lasers deliver multiple MJ per square cm. Is it possible to make a 100% effective "sandstorm" that is plausible using 50kg of particles? I would argue that it is not plausible, for reasons laid out above.

^^^I'm fine with that rationale for kerbal tech handwaving, but why are spaceplanes, well, pretty, and rocket parts look like my kid drew them?

I suppose they could require pressing and holding for a couple seconds, then the same for the confirmation button.

This is so very true, hence my constant whining that such a thread needs a really detailed "universe" to be useful. We need not just TRLs, but geopolitics, economics, and history to really make sense of it.

I'm tater, and I approve of OP's post. I understand that stuff comes from different companies. I get that. I'm fine with all the parts by a given manufacturer having an affinity, and slightly different from their competitors. But even within that, so many rocket parts are just awful.

I'd not disagree, except that all the spaceplane parts look like they came--brand new---out of the same, futuristic spaceplane factory.

There is no fallacy. You are claiming that because low-powered lasers are mitigated by transmission through long path lengths of dense sandstorms within an atmosphere, they will similarly be affected by tiny path lengths though less dense sand. You are making a positive claim that the 2 are the same, when they self-evidently are not. Your example is: Not in space. Not the same density of sand. Not the same path length of obscuration for the beam to travel through. We can extrapolate from the real world, which is exactly what I did. I took a typical grain size for real particulate matter called "sand" (which is what your real world example is), and calculated how many of those grains exist in a 50kg bag of same (a given for any traveller discussion, that's canon), then provided densities of that sand in space, dispersed over a couple different radii as examples. We could alter the parameters of the sand, say go with a smaller grain size, but we just interact with more, but smaller grains. We could then calculate the optical depth of out sandcaster cloud. We can also mess with how it is deployed (farther away from the launching ship, the cloud could be smaller, as long as it subtends the same angle as your ship to the shooter). Anyway, it is not a beam traveling through 2+ km of sand+atmosphere, it is a beam traveling though maybe 40 meters of sand with say 0.003 grains of sand per cm of path length. In this example, AT MOST, the beam will interact with 12 grains. Not 12 grams, 12 individual grains. At this same low density, the 2 km path length (not counting atmospheric effects)of a sandstorm example would result in the same beam interacting with 600 grains. Of course real sandstorms have more than a single sand/dust particle for every 333 cubic cm, so the beam would interact with vastly more grains. I've seen real sandstorms described as holding millions of tons of sand while being on the order of 100km across. We could then find out what the density of a real sandstorm actually is, and go for that in space (minus the (large) atmospheric effects)). Great. Let's use a higher density of sand... but we are only allowed 50kg of sand, because that is a given. So any attempt to make the sandstorm analogy work either requires more sand than we are allowed by canon, or our 50kg must be placed in a very small volume of space near our ship. Neither works, as we'd be stuck deploying the sand into a volume not substantially larger than the canister it came in. This is what "theoretical" and extrapolating is. I'm not even bothering with super accurate values, sandcasters don't even work at the "order of magnitude" level. So again, show your work for your positive claim that canon traveller sandcasters would work, because sandstorms mitigate lasers on earth. Chaff possibly useful, active sensors are unlikely to be used much, but they could be used in terminal guidance of missiles, etc. (foil IS chaff, BTW). Decoys are pretty much useless, they need to be as massive as the ship they pretend to be to match acceleration with output. Smokescreens? Adding gasses/particulates seems like a chance to advertise your position, not hide it, though it's not impossible that this could be used to some benefit.

The "constant art style" right now is that spaceplane parts look awesome, and rocket parts look terrible. I do fault them for that, actually. Those parts need a revamp on the textures (and models in many cases).

Eeloo at its most distant is about 0.78 real AU from Kerbol. Light lag in KSP is pretty much meaningless.

I addressed this. Lower earth atmosphere != space. You need to demonstrate that 50kg of sand, scattered to cover a typical starship in traveller = that sandstorm. Show your work. Your argument is analogous to: "wings work here on earth, I see planes overhead every day, so they must work in space!" Regarding the silly game... I am the one arguing it is silly in this regard, you are attempting to argue it is not. EDIT: BTW, I like traveller, and my name is actually in one of the book credits. Also, it is primarily a roleplaying game, so many good "house rules" by people who think about these things have them there (they are part of the canon, after all), but grossly reduced in efficacy. They were "balanced" back in the day (Little Black Books) to provide a very effective defense for small ships, nearly or actually 100% in most cases. Most people I know made it have a chance of working, but no where near 100% (throw more sand out maybe to increase chances of it working at some level) on some task roll. Alternately, it was just dumped. In all cases, though, the ship was not allowed to maneuver or evade (RCS displacement, basically) making it pretty vulnerable. The goal with having it have a very low, but non-zero chance of it working in an RPG, is that the ref can always roll (fake roll), and let the players off if he does't want them killed. All the traveller talk reminds me of arguments regarding missiles we had. Many argued that missiles were so easy to shoot down that no one would use them (once within a certain range, directed energy weapons cannot possibly miss any target, so the number of missiles killed is the number of unique targets the weapon can target/slew to). This is true, but in this thread context it is useful. Missiles are impossible because anti-missile systems are too good. No one then uses missiles. Then no one equips lasers capable of slewing to many targets in short time periods, because why bother when they address a threat no one thinks is plausible. Now my ship armed with missiles is suddenly pretty scary, all because I didn't "get the memo." So at a certain level, I'd expect a "warship" to have a few different weapons systems, under the assumption they cannot foresee every possible threat.

Then all the spaceplane parts need to be immediately replaced with ones that look like junk. Assuming this is not going to happen, then most rocket parts need to be cleaned up considerably. RoverDude, I think the gray is a little dark. Seems like it should be the same gray as all the other small, grayish/metal parts (girders, etc). It might be an artifact of that background, however, hard to tell.

Is it set up for career, or just sandbox?

You posted no proof whatsoever. A sandstorm is in the atmosphere, which already attenuates the beam a great deal. The sand density is greater, and the beam is attenuated during the entire path length, not just the last few meters. Also, the lasers in question are not nearly as powerful. It's not even roughly analogous to the sand caster idea. You could possibly use the sand density to try and calculate sand casters, after you tease out those effects vs the atmosphere. Canon traveller sand canisters are 50kg. Please show what density is required to attenuate a laser delivering multiple MJ. In your sandstorm example, how bad was it for the laser to pass through 1cm of sandstorm? That sand in traveller is nonsense is not even controversial. Everyone knew it was nonsense 30+ years ago, you can likely find the old usenet posts about it.

This. It uses a battery that like others lasts a few years with NO sun, but the solar merely extends that duration.

While a little OT, I'm always willing to talk traveller (my first space game). To properly disagree, you need to show some math that there is any chance it might work. You need to show that X grains per cc is enough to have the effect the tables provide. Currently in T5, I think sand can be 100% effective (unsure here). The answer is that is you if cover a whole cross-section of the ship, it has ZERO effect (the incoming beam will likely hit 1-2 grains total). It's 100% implausible. We are talking about a high-powered beam (traveller ships are built of unobtanium, after all (SD or BSD), so beams have to penetrate this), so a few grains over a 40m path length does exactly nothing. You could posit that a coasting ship disperses the sand at some range in a much denser grouping. Basically, you look at the solid-angle the ship subtends from the POV of the shooter, and move away from the target ship until the radius of that solid angle goes from 20m down to a value that makes the sand quite dense. Quite dense is relative... So we have a 1cm beam for example. How many grains must be in even a single cc of space the beam passes through for a serious attenuation of the beam? Do we need all 50 kg in 1 cc? A cubic meter is 1,000,000 cubic centimeters. For our nominal 5mg sand particles, the entire 50kg is 10 million grains, so only "dispersed" into a single m^3, that's 10 grains per cc. Do you think 10 grains of sand will stop a laser that can blow holes in "superdense" hull? Is it reasonable to think you can place 50kg of sand in a volume smaller than 1 m^3, AND put it in the way of an incoming laser pulse?

Smartwatches have some utility. I'm a decent control, as I am not invested in my iWatch at all. Not financially, not intellectually, and not emotionally. Just checked the cost of the Pebble Steel, and it's about what I think I would be personally be willing to pay for an iWatch (which is basically 2x more). So if my iWatch was $200, knowing what I do now having owned one for a while, I'd buy it. Before I was given one as a gift, I actually got in a conversation with a friend (a lawyer who likes expensive watches), and I said I couldn't see any possible utility in a smartwatch, they were just dumb. So actually using one changed my mind on their utility, but I think the Apple watch is overpriced. That said, it's odd what we concentrate on price wise sometimes. I spend more time comparing TVs or other relatively cheap tech than I spent buying my last car.

I'm curious, what part of the world do you live in? Here in NM, with 300+ sunny days a year, I could totally see the value in a solar watch

LOL. Except that it won't actually work, even for 1 second.

I got an iWatch as a gift. They are ~$400, I think. I'd not buy one for that, it's a phone accessory. That said, for what it does, it's pretty cool, but obviously it needs tight integration with the phone. What I actually use: time (obviously) alarms texting, though mostly reading them (handy because you can glance at a watch in situations where taking a phone out would be rude) health stuff (fitbit type stuff) altimeter (hiking) camera control (acts as a remote (with preview image) of my phone, which is pretty cool. I can take pics of the whole family on a hike, or I can use it to take dim light images, because I can prop the phone and not jiggle it for longer exposures). I don't use it D1ck Tracy style for phone conversations.

The religious nuts need people alive to convert, so they have to send troops. They arrange to send multiple ships for some good reason (best transfer period, works, and is unsuspicious), then all their trading ships head to the belt... as trojan horses, loaded with troops. No one expects troops, it's over pretty much immediately as they dock as usual, then take the places over at gunpoint.

Yeah, that's why most of my watches are "field" watches, they are smaller, and less annoying. I like the new smartwatch for hiking, though (my house is right against a mountain), I have altitude, the usual health stuff, as well as a map, etc. No need to pull phone out, just a glance. Plus alarms are trivial to set, so I know when to head back. My dad gave me his rolex which he didn't like to wear, so now I have it and don't like to wear it as well, lol.

I had firmly moved into the pocket watch category (i.e.: my smartphone), then my dad got me an iWatch for my birthday this spring. It's certainly not worth a few hundred bucks---but it's totally worth having for free I suppose it's worth more than a fitbit, which my wife has, though I don't know what those cost, certainly less than an iwatch (though mine is not an expensive one). I have a bunch of analog watches, but I don't wear them much now. If I were to shop for a new one, it would actually be shopping for a vintage ww2 A-11 watch, I think.