tater

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.

They are entirely unrelated to each other, period. More realism can make better or worse gameplay. If context matters, it's the context, not the "realism."

We could argue n-body, but I don't need to. You need to demonstrate that ANY choice that increases realism always hurts gameplay. So any dangerous reentry must harm gameplay if what you say is true. Any more rather than less realistic treatment of orbital mechanics harms gameplay, etc. if that is not true, then the 2 are not the opposites you make them out to be. If rockets are better than "lift wood" then your argument fails. note that I do not claim that realism always makes gameplay better, as the 2 are unconnected.

The very notion of "gameplay over realism" is utter nonsense, the 2 things have exactly nothing to do with each other. The reentry effects are basically nonexistent, anyway. They scrub a few parts off the outside of poorly built craft. I tested heat shields and capsules at actual Mars/lunar reentry speeds (at kerbin, however) and had no failures (11-12 km/s direct reentry with a 20km periapsis). This is all aside from the fact that OP's craft works just fine, losing NOTHING, the only change in behavior is to set SAS retrograde, and don't turn it off.

Simple solution. Have decouplers create an autofairing equal to their own size, always, and if their size is smaller than what they are attaching, then they make no fairing at all. Attach a 2.5m decoupler to a 1.25m engine, and you get a 2.5m fairing. Attach a 1.25m decoupler to a 2.5m engine, no fairing. Done.

50k is chump change, and you cannot be sure the next title will profit (assuming there is one). 6M$ divided by 15 people over 4 years is 100k a year. Obviously other costs would heavily reduce that, leaving little left. The people posting here already spent their $20, they need new sales. I hope they make a mint, they deserve it, it's a fun game. After we get bored and move on to the next cool game they still have to make a living.

Most everyone here has gotten vastly more out of KSP than they paid for already. I'm happy for whatever other ways to monetize their time the dev can figure out, this isn't a hobby for them, it's their livelihood.

Haven't read this entire thread, don't plan to. Squad is a business. Making money (which is their entire purpose, BTW) means they can do more of what we want them to do. If it pays their bills, buys news shoes for their kids, etc, I'm all for it. Heck, maybe they will hire someone to deal with the console issues. Anyway, I'll not jump to conclusions about how this will affect the computer version.

My experience was to set the SAS, and watch what happened. I think I set periapsis to around 45km, from a 70-something roughly circular orbit. If your craft is capable of reentering without issues, then it's not a craft problem, it's a piloting problem. Ideally, all reentries in KSP would be sensitive to entry conditions, frankly. Pilot wrong, and you die. As it is you have to actively work to screw it up. Is there any chance the OCTO is upside down? More reality checks: I just did a few direct returns from the Mun with this (the first craft pictured with he 3 small tanks). LMO to 40km Kerbin periapsis. Tried to hit as close to 30 fuel as possible upon reentry. Speed from Mun was closer to 2900. Reenters just fine, flies exactly correct as set, retrograde every time. Only if you turn off the SAS, it flips. Your complex workaround is to set retrograde, then don't turn SAS off. Do you really think that craft should be stable the wrong way with no SAS? BTW, in the tests where I turned SAS off... it flipped, and still landed just fine. The g-meter never went much above green when the chutes deployed, it was pretty gentle. This seems like a "solution" in search of an actual problem.

The craft already reenters fine, at least from LKO. I play strictly career, and I've not really worried about recovering anything, and I have loads of funds. I waited to land on the Mun until I could do it sort of Apollo style (I did earth orbit rendezvous, though). Landed properly on kerbin in a capsule.

I made sure I had the same fuel as you did when reentry effects started. If you had a problem at a higher velocity, slow down. You apparently think the LEM should have been able to reenter from the Moon at 11.5 km/s by slapping parachutes on it. If you don't want to build a reasonable craft, aerobrake a few times with a higher periapsis, then reenter as I did. I did nothing but set a periapsis using fuel (I started with more than your image, so I should have had a lower CM) to get it closer to the value in your pic.

Don't forget that his craft reenters just fine, and doesn't actually flip. Build one and try it.

Then you'd be on here complaining that your rockets are flipping because the top is too light. you have the smallest engine on your craft, and you expect it to be a lot heavier? Then all should be heavier, too, then the rocket that sent your airless world lander to the target would likely get bigger. If the capsules change mass (lighter, apparently, then virtually every part needs a new mass. This is all on top of the fact that your craft doesn't need to be spammed with sas, I showed a pic of it after reentry, it never budged from retrograde. The game doesn't require bringing back any science parts, take the data, store in capsule.

We disagree that there is anything undesirable happening at all. One, the airless world lander you posted reenters just fine, I even posted a picture for you. Two, you are right that something undesirable is happening, that lander should burn. Good gameplay is having to make design choices with consequences. You apparently think pretty much any craft should reenter and survive. You keep claiming you are making an argument you don't seem to be making. you said recovering less than you used to is undesirable. Why? Is it also undesirable if you need to add weight and cost via a fairing at launch? How are the two at all different?

Some things could be abstracted, or done as "AI" kerbals. Move the appropriate equipment, and so many 10s of tons of building materials to a location (say the Mun), and your kerbals drive the bulldozers around (like the trucks in the VAB) for a certain number of days, then you see a facility start to appear.

The root part doesn't matter. Even as a noob, not knowing that reentry wasn't actually a thing I never built things that looked like the LEM and tried to reenter them. You could, but only because KSP was silly and utterly unrealistic about reentry (still is). The first craft is not a capsule any more than the entire rocket that launched it would be by virtue of having a capsule on top. Again, if aero is realistic to zeroth or first order, then if it flips, then so be it, design better craft for reentry. If aero is unrealistic in such a way that your craft should behave otherwise, then aero needs fixing. If aero needs fixing in a way that makes your airless world lander even less able to reenter, then that is what it should change to. Arbitrarily changing parameters so that lumpy craft can fly backwards through the air at 2-3 km/s makes no sense at all. BTW, how do we know the 1st craft is heavier at the bottom, the tanks are mostly empty. - - - Updated - - - I just built a copy of the first craft, with slightly more fuel than posted in that image (~40 liquid fuel, setting it in the VAB let me pick 13.5 or 9 per tank), the CM is right at the interface of the capsule and Science Jr. Drained slightly the CM is in the capsule. If it flips, what a surprise. - - - Updated - - - Reality check #2. I just reentered my copy of the above craft. Set the OCTO to point retrograde. Retracted 2 panels until it started showing reentry effects, then retracted the last one. It never flipped, popped the chutes and it landed fine. The game is just as silly as one would expect. I was in LKO. It's a lot to ask that a munar lander type vehicle be able to reenter not "at all," but on a direct reentry from the Mun. Mine didn't even wobble at 2300 m/s. So the craft doesn't flip with SAS on. I can only assume the problem is that it should. The fact that stuff like this can survive reentry does merit a suggestion thread---that reentry needs to be far nastier than it is.

As it should, the science bay masses nearly nothing. The part description for the landercan says it cannot possibly survive reentry (a lie, obviously), so don't do that.

Yeah, this should be in mods, not suggestions for the core game. For the core game, the question is is the aero system working right, PERIOD. If the craft is behaving as realistically as stock deals with things, then it should not change. Altering the aero to make certain, arbitrary crafts behave in an arbitrary way might screw up other crafts that otherwise made sense, and then won't, just so some ridiculous contraptions can among safe reentry (that should not be).

What is even more funny is that it's already nearly impossible to have reentry actually be dangerous. I hit kerbin with a 20km periapsis doing nearly 12 km/s. Heatshield instantly evaporated... Then bare capsule happily survived. I did a direct reentry with a Mun lander from the Mun (had a probe core and fuel, but was earlier in career and had the small docking port). Anyway, direct reentry with ~20k periapsis set. No chutes. Landed it, but broke 1 of 3 legs.

I'll keep an eye out for how stable it is when I can play (maybe tonight). My SSD is in, now I'm on 10.10.3 instead of Lion, too.

You can remove science from the experiments, and place it in the capsule. The craft should reenter the way the craft should reenter. The test is to reenter, and see what happens. It flips, so you can either demonstrate that aerodynamically it should NOT flip, otherwise it is correct behavior. Use a capsule.

Why would anyone expect a lander like that to reenter in one piece?

What about my i7 iMac 27" with an ati 5750?

I'm the 2.93 i7, 12 GB ram, gonna throw the SSD in tomorrow I guess, except we have a thing in the evening, so unsure, I might be minus my machine til Sunday.