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Obviously the parameters change based upon gravity, atmosphere, and composition.

All worlds need this treatment.

It's an exploit, and it's a basic problem with the balancing. ISRU should be efficient in mass at some level. If you are far from your planet, it should have logistical/mass benefits. It should not necessarily even be cost-effective (we'd be willing to spend more money on ISRU that fuel would cost, or maybe even another launch for the mass savings). It should also not be anything like 100% efficient in turning "ore" into the products. "Holding tanks" should just be there because drilling can outpace refining, and filling a large fuel tank should tank a LONG time.

Orbital should not possibly be cost (dv) effective. The conversion rate should make it a net loss to move raw materials around, ever.

I pictured him younger, more of a post-doc age, making his love of disco even more odd.

I put some easter eggs in the slides of my wife's dissertation (rat kidneys under a microscope) at the pixel level, off to the side of the field.

I haven't read the whole thread. Please tell me no one is stupid enough to care about this. (And yes, anyone actually concerned is intellectually impaired).

It would have to have a default seed, then once you have discovered THAT, then you move to new systems.

I forgot about spaceplanes since I don't make them. Yeah, huge issue since they are in this regime far longer, and have lots of bits sticking out. This is again why starting as realistically as possible is best since things that are hard in RL are hard. Generally speaking spaceplanes in ksp are too easy, but that's compared to earth, from fantasy mini-earth (kerbin) maybe it's ok.

I tend to agree, but people who expect to aerobrake at jool or eve in one pass would scream

Except for the Mac.

Maybe it's because I don't reenter anything that doesn't look like it shouldn't reenter. Actually, I recently tested a craft from another thread (a Mun lander, basically) that should have not made it, and it landed just fine.

The problem is scale. 3000m/s? LOL. I tested kerbin up to about 12 km/s with a 20 km periapsis. Even at that velocity reentry is not troublesome. This is a situation that shows where realism is a better benchmark. Have a tiny system, with exaggerated gravity, and pulled from thin air atmospheric settings, and trying to balance things becomes impossible if a goal is for kerbin reentry to be even a little dangerous. i will test using RSS tonight and see if at real scale reentry has some dangers. My thought is that the default orbital velocities are higher, and the time of reentry exposes the craft to longer heating.

You should want to explore just to see new worlds. This would require a randomized Kerbol system, such that you never know what you might find.

I've been messing around a little at night with KSP since I downgraded to Yosemite (don't even get me started on the train-wreck that is the new "Photos" app---but I'm open to 3d party suggestions, how's Lightroom?). At least for KSP it seems pretty good so far. Just played a modded career, went 45 minutes then actually crashed (not a lockup).

Many added mods are for parts. Parts are the reward in ksp (what you get for unlocking tech). I think there needs to be more stuff, frankly, though I have always thought that trading planetary science for rocket parts is absurd.

Like it or not, people unconsciously play to reward systems. This has been well studied. The tech tree is THE reward system in KSP. Getting new missions doesn't help, as they have no reward.

^^^in KSP people would make ridiculous, wide landers and not worry about the height (or use magical jetpacks instead of a ladder). Heck, they'd then want the entire craft to reenter Kerbin and land, lol

Deformable terrain. I have yet to see any facility at KSC become harmed, but I'd intentionally crater the Mun.

Yeah, I agree. As I said, Kerbin (and the other worlds) could have the gravity scaled to match their size in the up-scaled system. Kerbin at 64% of earth radius (and earth's density) will have g=6.26 m/s^2. I could live with that, frankly. Eve could be bumped up to real earth size. There are loads of fun things to try. I mentioned this in the lander thread, but really the Mun should have been designed such that 2-stage landers make sense as an option, leaving Minmus as the 1-stage alternative (since there are 2 moons, why not make different gameplay for each?).

Then it is not MM (massively multiplayer) as most all people would be warping on their own, and not be in lockstep. MMO for KSP is a novelty, and only realistic in narrow situations. 100% lockstep, or it's pixie dust.

An MMO and any sort of realism are mutually exclusive. Any space travel game (any naval game on earth, for that matter) requires time compression. Every single object in game must warp time in lockstep, or it's nonsense. - - - Updated - - - I agree, though I would add that for kerbals, properly sized might still be smaller than 10X. I've player with a bunch of RSS configs, and 6.4x is totally doable with stock parts (though the HGR 1.875 parts and procedural tanks certainly help). If the gravity of Kerbin actually scaled with the diameter (assuming earthlike composition), then it would be very stock-like, even with the larger size (Kerbin's gravity would be greatly reduced). For an actual sequel, I would call KSP the "exploration" phase, and KSP 2 the early colonization/exploitation phase. So the goal would be in-situ construction as an option in the v.2. That would be the focus change. I'd add AI to the game as well, since it would become more useful if your astronauts could actually do things by themselves. So you could set up the construction, and they do it while you concern yourself with other gameplay if you like. Resupply, etc could be done by player, or his astronauts, etc.

This is another place where "realism" would have made gameplay better. In a scaled up Kerbol system (need not be 10X, or even 6.4X, maybe 3-4X), 2-stage landers for the Mun might actually become attractive/necessary. Minmus could then allow for easy, 1 stage landers (or direct descent/ascent) because it might remain small. This would make more variability in "ideal" munar landing operations, which is fun (kerbin-orbit rendezvous, a direct mission, munar-orbit rendezvous, etc). The 2-moon system would be far more interesting if the Mun were substantially larger/difficult. As-is, Minmus is just an ugly, and even easier target.

A periscope could be a pretty narrow field of view, or it might be to fish-eyed and distorted. It would be possible to design one such that control inputs would make sense to the pilot, though. Visibility was certainly a factor in LEM design (our lander pods could use a roof window for docking, though). In addition, if SAS was't magically strong, many slopes would be fatal as well (hard to determine in a periscope or camera view (periscope could be binocular, which would help). Regardless, even in the tiny kerbol system, landers make some sense even if not actually required. I would add that the forces on the pilot vs what they see in a periscope system can be very confusing. The USAAF experimented with periscope-controlled gun turrets in WW2, and it made the gunners very quickly nauseous, because the attitude of themselves and what they experienced visually were entirely disconnected.

Reality check. Slap legs on your CSM. Land on Mun---but never leave IVA. Let us know how that works out for you. Pro version: turn on scatter, and if you land and even clip a rock, treat your landing as a catastrophic (all dead) failure.