tater

I switched to far after playing maybe a month. I never noticed any difference whatsoever. I've never even tried MJ, though.

And some sort of scanning is coming with ISRU anyway, right? This would fundamentally improve the "science" system. I think it is entirely fair to reduce part count and assume that ALL command pods and probe cores have cameras. The early probes and the mk1 pod can be assumed to have B&W cameras capable of mapping surface features. The quality would depend upon a couple options. One, antennas can start to matter. Omni antennas only transmit at a very low bitrate, you'll want a high-gain. Capsules (or the right probe design) can return the images for development. So a combination of camera quality, bitrate, and flyby/orbital altitude drives the map quality. More advanced pods and probes would have better and better cameras.

This is so very needed. A simple way to implement this is to fix the visual model used in map view to an altitude that is not determined by the current spacecraft. Say you teleport a new ship to a world in low orbit. The view from external view is the real view. The map view would have the world as seen from the point it first renders, just zoomed into THAT texture (a few handfuls of pixels across of texture, even though you are in low orbit). If the craft contains the right instruments, then as you orbit, the altitude the map view uses to select the texture detail decreases.

I'll give it a read---I understand completely that an editor is a huge amount of work, really something squad should do.

I'd like to have certain parts able to be considered "collapsable," and landed in a cargo pod of some sort and assembled by an engineer on the surface. Perhaps a mass limit on the cargo pod.

A mod is going to probably close all these posts you are making since the thread is 2 years old, just so you know.

Transport is the biggest PITA to me. I'd like some ability to construct items in situ that is less extensive than Extraplanetary Launch Pads. Like a few containers that have a dry mass, plus an allowance for "cargo" that can be assembled after landing, perhaps by an engineer kerbal. Item must be below some part count, and not more than a certain mass for the container. You could have 1.25m versions that hold some fraction of a ton of craft, and then some 2.5m versions. Maybe the engineer uses a mechanism like flag planting within X meters of the landed container, and the craft is built on that spot.

I'd actually like to see a branching option for career/science start that puts you at some inland launch site and uses soviet-feeling parts. That'd be really cool.

I played Minecraft when my kids got it, and I like it. I only ever played survival/hard, ever. Even then, Minecraft is exceedingly boring. I made a few worlds for my kids to explore in in survival, building more interesting temples, etc. (over spawners I found if possible to make them nastier). Sorta like sandbox. The real requirement for any sort of replay in career is to have the kerbol system randomize so that you need to actually explore, and new landings are novel. Sandbox KSP is fine, but that's an entirely different can of worms than creating a good career game. All the complaints about career, or pitching open-ended are excuses for bad game design, IMO. The game design of career needs to start out defining what the point is, then the game design (career systems like funds, mission planning, etc) needs to drive that goal. What is the end-game? Inhabitation of various worlds? Maybe the goal should be set by the payer---not sandbox, but the overarching goal of HIS program, which then drives the path out of choices careers would present. Say when you start out you assign plans. 1 year goals, achieve spaceflight, and land on the Mun and Minmus (in current KSP where time is pointless, that might as well be the 1 DAY goal), 10 year goal, land on Duna and return safely to Kerbin (manned). 20 year goal, start permanent basing.

Special Agent Sigvan's point is silly. Randomly generated names are random. As anyone who actually lives in a country like the US or Canada (can't speak for the UK) knows, many popular girls names in North America are in fact male. Madison became popular, for example. They made up a new definition, but it really means "Matthew's son." Not a girl name. How do you tell it's a girl? By looking at the owner of the name most likely (a tiny percentage of outliers notwithstanding).

For a new player, starting with career, maybe. Any replay would then do just as well to start in Sandbox, no? The reality is that in career, unlocking the tech tree is the only goal. Individual players obviously vary, but that is the sole reward system. Without mods like life support, etc, the only difficulty about the distant worlds is time (warped anyway, and time doesn't matter without LS, annual budgets, etc). Sure, some are physically difficult to land and return from, very difficult in some cases. Again, without mods, you can launch arbitrarily large/bizarre crafts, and get it done. Still, from a game-psychology standpoint, players unconsciously tend to want to play the reward system, and failing to recognize this is bad game design.

There needs to be a very low thrust RCS set added. Probes need them, and pods need them. This should be an early tech item.

I need to figure your mod out. I have it, and was a little confused… What would be ideal would be, even if an external program, a contract editor where someone clueless can just pick and choose from pull-downs and generate contract packs. I'd be all over that in a heartbeat (I did an extensive, semi-historical campaign mod for Silent Hunter 4 using their mission editor, for example).

Meaningful science over time should not be "points," but gathering useful data about bodies you study. Resources is sort of adding this via scanning, right? The "collect science from orbit around X" contracts need to be expunged, or replaced with a requirement to place certain instruments in orbit, which can then generate small science per unit time. Time warp can be used to achieve it, so what? These contracts are now worth 1-2 science, then thousands of funds, and you can decline contracts til you see them again, and do them nearly infinitely within a single day if you are concerned about "abuse." Put pods around kerbin, mun, and minmus. Only accept those science contracts til you get all 3. Go to tracking, send science, return to mission control, repeat. A boring exploit, and only uses up the time you are in orbit clicking the crew report and waiting for the data to send. Far better to have science over time that limits the science to 1 point every X days (X can be arbitrarily large for balance). USEFUL science would be better. Add cameras, or assume that all probe bodies and pods have cameras already (higher level have better cameras). Know how you can only zoom in so far in map view? Start with the most zoomed in view equal to the best you have in external view from any craft that has been in that world's SoI that has sent science (using the altitude it sent science from). As a probe/pod does "science over time," the zoom level improves based upon the orbital altitude of the craft (and the camera/probe quality). So a flyby of even the most primitive probe that returns data actually helps your program in future missions. A more complex method would perhaps weight the available map-zoom to the amount of time spent, camera quality, area actually imaged, etc (so that a single impactor probe doesn't unlock perfect map-zoom). Might be as simple as a cap on map zoom until you have a high quality camera in a polar orbit our something).

Yeah, the male pattern baldness hairline, the NASA names (Gene, Werner, etc) on some. All names that are recognizable being male, human names… My daughter likes Val, and that's good enough for me. Regarding lego, my daughter HATES the 'Lego Friends" crap. She saw them and said, "I don't want a bunch of pink crap, all I want are the regular sets to have some girl minifigs." Luckily her brother picks out his sets partially based upon them having a girl she'd like to play with (so he'll spend his own money to buy a set that contains Batgirl, for example). Having some female characters is a great addition, I have trouble imagining having a problem with it, frankly.

Yes, I agree. The contract system is very meh right now, and all FP did was add more contracts that become as boring as the stock ones. Contracts/missions certainly need a hook to connect them conditionally. If you've fulfilled contract "5 kerbal station," then offer contract "attach science lab and cupola to 5 kerbal station." (note that the game should see what you actually have named that station, and use THAT name for "5 kerbal station." I don't know if it is possible, but for planetary bases, I'd like to see a softer definition of components at a base. Instead of a single craft with X parts, and containing Y kerbals, I'd like the ability to have contracts that require landed facilities within some range of the named facility. Say 'Mun Base 1" for the non-creative. So you might then get a contract to add more habitation, and instead of having to dock them together, you need only place the new hab modules within whatever range is specified, say 200m in this case. Note that SOME contracts might require docking parts on the ground, just not all. Then contracts might require adding rovers with certain capabilities to the base, etc.

stupid_chris, is it possible to make a zero-thickness part that could be like the flags, but are in fact "inset" RCS parts? Then you could apply them to a capsule as a unique part. Perhaps they would be customized as 1.25m for the mk1, and 2.5 for the mk1-2? Maybe as a complete "ring" so that this one part would do for each (and they would be scaled to exactly fit those pods).

I've never looked much at them, I don't do spaceplanes. I just looked at them, they certainly look like RCS jets on the mk2 as well. If not, what are they, exactly? There are 4 right under the windscreen, and they are symmetric. If they are instruments, what 4 are they? Those even have scorch marks.

Cameras should have been one of the first instruments, and yeah, the nitrate of the antenna types could determine the science gained. Cameras could in addition provide USEFUL science. Not "points," but something you can use. Simple useful metric for cameras: 1. Add a value for the visual point of view altitude for map view. The farther from Kerbin, the higher alt the map will be at full zoom. Jool, Duna, Dres, for example will only "zoom" in map view to about what you might see out the window of your pod at the first point the planet renders at all. Utterly useless, in other words. 2. Putting cameras near any world (SoI?) improves the POV altitude based upon the flyby distance, and camera type down to some altitude above current map POV minimum alt. 3. Putting a camera in orbit drops it farther based upon the apoapsis and periapsis, and perhaps the inclination (require an inclined orbit at some level for a mapping mission, not just equatorial). With the better camera, and a high-gain antenna, the POV altitude then starts to improve upon the current situation, and at some level of mapping the map view would become as good as the "real" view (allowing later players to plan landings on the Mun down to the smallest craters, for example, never really leaving map view if they like).

They are obviously RCS ports, I'd suggest fixing the textures, they'd be easy to remove. Then rcs blocks could be added, perhaps as decals for pods?

Yes, the should. Regarding the existing ports screwing things up, have the ability to turn them off for the pod, problem solved.

How about no? Most of the kerbal names are random. I like to find one with a cool, random name best.

I never watch them, and likely never will. I prefer to read information. Unless very targeted to showing something visual, video is pretty much always worse/less efficient. If they want to do video casts, every second of the video should be new content to observe or I'm entirely uninterested.

A couple.

That's a nice, simple solution for stock (though I now play with KCT).