tater

I have put wheels on a few. I also made a rover with a claw on it, and simply pushed them (modules with no wheels) together to dock them (I landed them VERY close, then assembled gangways with KIS/KAS, and only had to nudge them maybe a meter).

I might agree (actually, I do ), but the definition doesn't say squat about Lagrange points. Like I said, incredibly imprecise. Amazing it would occur to them to define something and not bother to, you know, define it. They should be explicit about hydrostatic equilibrium, as well. Define acceptable eccentricity, or just go with a mass, they can certainly pick a theoretical value for a mass that fulfills this. It;s also better because they can get the mass far easier than the shape observationally for faint objects.

The earth shares its orbit with thousands of asteroids. I read the definition, and I don;t see any mention of trojans, or in fact any co-orbital bodies, just "neighborhood." Better to say µ must be >100 or something. - - - Updated - - - They are in jupiter's neighborhood, are they not? They orbit the sun, right? What does the definition say? Nothing. Like I said, imprecise.

I said any such definition would be arbitrary. It's entirely possible to be mathematically precise, however, the definition is theoretical (precise), then applied to real bodies. They are talking about clearing orbital neighborhoods. They don't say how clear, the implication is a single intruding body would be disqualifying---if I can imply that, it starts looking like magical books that require interpretation, not science. Such a rule should not be as frankly random and subjective as it is. We should know that we have not mapped all the objects yet. At this point, it would be no more less arbitrary to make the definition a suggesting for attributing status, and vote case by case. It is not simple, granted. It's analogous to zoology (which is where astronomy was for a long time). Look at definitions of species, for example. Paleontological definitions, appearance, can they breed, will they breed, etc, etc. I'm not a Pluto is a planet partisan, actually, it's pretty puny, and I'm fine with dwarf planet, but the new definition only gives the appearance of being objective when it is in fact subjective.

What about trojans? How many objects does jupiter share its "neighborhood" with? Many thousands, right?

Science doesn't work by voting. Even so, the IAU cast the vote with a quorum of a tiny subset of members. The new definition is arbitrary (as was the old). I'm fine with the rationale, but it's arbitrary. I'm a little more concerned with the lack of math in the definition, frankly. Define "cleared the neighborhood" for me mathematically. How small can a body be in the neighborhood, and bump a standing planet off the list? If a dwarf planet came swinging in, was perturbed into jupiter's orbit for some period of time, does Jupiter get bumped? Does the definition include a timeframe for possibly transient bodies? Hydrostatic equilibrium? Ice will form a sphere with less mass than rock, why not set a mass? You could let liquid water out in a way that it would form a sphere, then freeze. If I put it between Uranus and Neptune, in a stable orbit, is it a planet? I get that they don't want 1000 planets, and agree---but the definition should be mathematically precise.

Totally in scope for career. Kerbals crash stuff. Being able to fix things, particularly with stock skills and limited repair? Makes total sense.

Yeah, KIS/KAS should be made stock yesterday.

I turned the textures down, and no longer crash (even though I have large amounts of RAM to spare on this i7 mac). Running Yosemite now (was on Lion before, and that worked as well).

I voted it was a mix, then the last 2 careers have been 100% females, and instead of ignoring rescues, I've been declining most of them to get more... all female. what sets the ratio, and how could a mod screw it up? Might be useful to know if mods can inadvertently mess with this.

There are still people who prefer the souposphere, so perhaps squad should not have bothered? It's a game, and gameplay matters. I suppose many of us might forget than the game jumped from alpha to beta to release faster than we thought, and are still pitching constructive criticism. Regardless, bad game design is bad. Career is 100% a game design issue, so why not have an arbitrarily good career?

KSP has sandbox, and it has science mode. Career is bad because it is simply not thought out as a whole. Everything in career (science work done, the tech tree, contracts, etc) are all interconnected, and they feel nothing short of slapdash. Might as well have a button in the VAB of sandbox that says "press to be asked to do something stupid," and be done with it.

The rotation is arbitrary, entirely depends on your POV.

I posted 2 pics one page up. They only get a couple pics an hour, right?

Pluto: Charon:

I think a mod moved the thread here from general. It's a possible bug report, really. If nothing is broken, then it's a suggestion to fix it.

A perfect example of a really dumb contract. Space stations should be Missions, and mostly not done for 3d parties. If it was a budget item, there would be no money given for it as it has no purpose.

Pong.

True enough. That's just because... reasons. I meant in general, though. I think the tree should be massively parallel if stuck with the current system.

Making a good tech tree is very hard in KSP because almost every tech in the game was concurrently developed in a handful of years in the real world, it's not really a progression. In addiiton, in KSP you do spaceflight to develop tech, whereas in the actual world, you develop tech to do spaceflight/science. It is completely backwards in KSP. You should instead get a budget of funds, and "research" coinage for a given mission. Then you choose carefully what to develop to do the mission. That derails the only reward system, though.

What do you mean by "cut off?" They broadcast when the spacecraft is not pointed elsewhere (doing science), when there is also a ground station available, AND they have time on that ground station. DSN has multiple craft to deal with, and they all get time allotted, so sometimes they might prefer to DL data, but DSN is busy with other spacecraft. Given the scheduling was very choreographed, I can only assume that they might broadcast some images out of sequence so they have a fabulous image for the press today.

Sat launches are the least offensive of the contracts to me from an immersion standpoint---that said, I almost always ignore them because as you say, they are incredibly boring Of course those that I have done I destroy after completing the mission, since I don't actually own them and it would be wrong to use them at all, IMO. The use of "kerbonaut" by people is sort of a peeve of mine since the astronaut complex is the astronaut complex, and Kerbin to "KERBonaut" would be like calling astronauts "EARTHonauts." Just dumb.

Either every single player warps time in lockstep, of multiplayer is a nonstarter for me. I tend to be interested largely in games that require time compression (naval sims like Silent Hunter, or age of sail stuff assuming a game ever gets made that doesn't stink (not holding my breath)), and multiplayer ruins all of them. They're fine if you want a LOLCARTOON version, I guess.

Yeah, I have not seen the specs on the memory, either. With only 1 backup, it might be less dense memory for rad hard, too (scale size between elements such that a cosmic ray hit won't be as nasty). There is also transmission time to consider given S/N issues. It will take months to dump even 8 gigs of data. Note that this is vastly more memory than Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini, etc have (kilobytes, not even MB), but they could also send data during observations.

I was messing around with KIS/KAS and the new Kerbal Planetary Base System mod by Nils277 (which is really cool), and the idea of rewards came to mind. In the stock game, the sole reward is unlocking tech as well all know. Using the engineer (not level 3) to repair a wheel by using a landing leg as a jack, then adding a new wheel, it occurred to me that the leveling system is sort of bizarre. Aside from the fact that perhaps new applicants (plus the initial 4) should maybe have random skill above 0, maybe ranking is a kind of reward. Right now, ranking is very formulaic, flyby, orbit, land, plant flag. Meh. What about specific tasks (done off-kerbin) can add XP? What about missions/contracts that do the same. Rendezvous and dock 2 craft? Pilots get XP. Do science away from kerbin as a scientist? Get XP. Fix stuff for an engineer? Get XP. I want to send a decent engineer to Duna, for example, and I know how to rank him via a grind in the Kerbin SoI, but it would be cooler if it was part of a more well thought out reward system. For piloting, the initial milestones could dish out contract-specific XP, but later guys will miss that. Some contracts might help---rescues, for example (give the pilot XP on the first rescue based upon how close they get to the stranded kerbal with a closure rate below 5 or something). Engineers can get repair contracts (stick a new solar panel on Kerbosat). Scientists can reset an experiment, do science, whatever. It's better than what we have now. Other rewards are more complex to figure out, particularly later game. Perhaps the ability to construct a VAB/launchpad elsewhere as a high-level reward. Not just bought with science points, but science, funds, and infrastructure. Buy an expensive (millions), heavy (20 tons?) container in the tree, then the VAB. Land 10 of them at a base that supports XX kerbals, and has power, a science lab, and ISRU. Then you can build the pad/VAB in-situ. Any other ideas?