tater

Yeah, something, anything would be better. It could even once every day, XX hours, whatever, lower any orbit that touches an atmosphere by 1000m (drop apoapsis and periapsis by that amount, or whatever). If any such drop puts both peri and apo inside the atmosphere, the object/vessel is deorbited next time it polls. It would be nice if astronauts could at least reenter by themselves (pilot skill?) as long as they are in a command pod and it has chutes.

I like the choice as well, but it would be nice if you could put stuff inside void areas, like the otherwise empty adaptors. Even just snapping mono tanks in there, or batteries, etc.

I'm fine with that. I'm not sure why you'd want to unlock a part you don't want to "use," but knock yourself out. The entire science/tech framework is flawed, IMO. It makes no sense whatsoever, so making a tree based upon unlocking with "science," is absurd, and by definition non-intuitive. I'm still at a loss how a geological sample from the Mun helps me get better parachutes, for example. How can any tree that makes me spend "planetary science" to buy new tech be intuitive? New player: "How to I unlock big parachutes, and advanced jet engines?" Old timer: "Collect some rocks on the Mun. Or go to orbit. Or test a huge booster engine cluster in the middle of the ocean. Yeesh, darn noobs." Old timer with a rational, intuitive tree: "Do some suborbital flights to test smaller chutes in the atmosphere, as well as some atmospheric science survey missions for the big chutes. For the jets you will need to have already researched the regular jets, plus some similar atmospheric science missions to the chutes since both work in air. You might be able to combine most of those experiments in a few flights."

LOL. This is a thread about a more intuitive tech tree, and your response is "don;t touch the tech tree, it makes it annoying to me!" An intuitive tree means that the relationship between older parts, and improved replacements matches real life expectations (intuition is informed by our real world expectations). So you'd expect to have to know how to make rocket engines before you can learn to hybridize jets and rockets. How about they make the tree make sense, then YOU can mod the game, or do something to make the tech tree pointless/arbitrary/whatever? The tech tree IS the gameplay of career. It is the reward system, planned that way or not. Having it make more sense (as it makes virtually none right now) WILL change the way things get unlocked.

I see 0.90 as different, but not really any more challenging (and it wasn't challenging from a career standpoint before). I did hard last update, with rewards cranked way down on top of that. It wasn't harder, IMO, just more grindy. LS certainly makes planning more important, and that to me is "harder" as I have to maintain resupply, etc.

I started a fresh career (on normal as a benchmark) with 0.90 release. I've only been playing since some point in the late summer, BTW, I'm a noob. It was trivial to upgrade/unlock everything, and I used no "strategies" as one, I'm sort of confused by them, and two, they seem overpowered. I'm not yet even to a good Duna Launch window, even with liberal use of time compression. So 1955 to 2055 in ~100 days kerbal time. Looks like the tech tree needs warp drive or something, so I can work towards something before the kerbal year is out.

No, you're missing the point. At some reasonable level, the two technologies are interconnected. You will likely have to develop rocket engines before you can build a spaceplane as the latter needs a non-airbreather at some point. If spaceplanes were easy to make before rockets, we'd not be waiting on the next Falcon 9 launch, there would be cheap planes in orbit already, too. A more intuitive tree means one that matches reality more. The suggestion was to have more requirements than just spending "science" (largely gained from planetary science, and hence entirely unrelated to "tech" anyway). So to get updated jet engines, you'd have to test the earlier jets. To get hybrid jet/rocket engines, you'd likely need to thoroughly test both precursors.

People can "play the game the way they want" in sandbox. Career needs limitations, that's the point of career. The tech tree cart is before the horse, anyway. 1. Add in failure %s for "experimental" parts. Failures should be pretty common, but most would be things like lower thrust, higher fuel consumption, less power generation, more power use, etc. (and engineers can possibly bring them up to "stock" values via EVA where appropriate) 2. Select a mission/contract (add some space program "strategies" that are actually strategies that involve spaceflight missions, like "land kerbals on the Mun."). 3. Said contract/mission ("Explore the Mun," for example as a mission) then unlocks Experimental Parts via a provisional unlock of nodes (picked by the player, and bought with "science" as now). Player selects contract(s), which have much more defined time periods to complete them (10 years is a long time when you can design, build, fly and return a mun mission in a few game hours, even with warping). 4. Player has these parts (in red perhaps, instead of the blue you see them in the VAB now) for doing their missions, but ones that are untested are "X" tech. The "X" parts can fail. New contracts would include some testing to be done before the final requirements. Landing on the Mun would require landing with some of the X parts attached to the vehicle, or no payout, for example. An pre-requirement might be to test some of the parts in Kerbin orbit, though. 5. Testing the parts, plus additional science is then required to revise the parts to be production parts (the parts we use now). So mission drives tech development instead of landing on the Mun to get science to unlock the parts you want for landing on the Mun.

I haven't used any exploits like having 1 satellite/station fulfill more than one contract except "science from orbit." I combined parts contracts into other missions to get parts I had not unlocked yet. I did a couple of ridiculous suborbital flights with goofy contraptions to lift huge booster clusters, etc, for hundreds of thousands. I unlocked most everything and upgraded most everything before day 90, with millions left over. Once I had craft in orbit, I'll take any "science from orbit around" contracts since those are a free 30 to 60k.

This. We need some inline fairings.

First (and required) mod would be to delete this.

I've only bought the one copy, but I got a friend to buy another.

No idea, I use the zips.

Alpha, beta, v 1.0? Who cares? As soon as someone mentions how much they paid, though, I have to go to value for the dollar/euro/pound. I paid $27, I think, which is like one entree at dinner someplace, or part of a tank of gas, or a decent bottle of wine… I got my money's worth the first weekend I played when my wife was on call, and I stayed up late playing a couple nights. What do you expect for effectively no expenditure on your part per unit time? Movies cost about $5/hr. Buy a movie and watch it 10X? Maybe $1/hr. How many hours have you played KSP, and what is your cost per hour? Trivial, I'd imagine.

De nada. Regarding the Mun, which end do I point at it to land?

The surface/visual/etc contracts on Kerbin I never do, I think they are somewhat absurd as you can land wherever, and have your craft picked up, so clearly it is easy to get everywhere without building an odd contraption to do so. I m fine with the kerbal equivalent to "Mission to Earth" stuff, where satellites are used to observe Kerbin, but those should mostly be orbital (suborbital versions are also OK for atmospheric science). In general the contracts need some work, and ideally would have an internal hierarchy. Many have 4 attached, one like "Observe Area 9713B on the Mun from above 7000m," then maybe 2 surface samples and an EVA report from Nerd Alpha, Beta, and Gamma respectively, usually sort of nearby, but not on top of each other. I'd prefer to see the orbital observation be above the lot, and required to unlock the surface collection/eva/seismic/etc elements of the contract. The idea is that you are to study an area, so you image it, then land, then take data.

I have yet to use the gizmo, I forgot it was there. I rarely rotate anything, though, and would not if it clipped, anyway.

Actually, that's a cool idea WRT part counts. Same could apply to rovers. Have a "cargo" capacity for some new module. It's a small mass (probes/rover/etc). Any subassembly can be placed in it, and the module only counts the mass of the subassemblies inside up to the max allowed. There can be a pointer to them, but they don't actually exist on the ship, they are just a Link in the ship cfg. An engineer is required to extract them.

Doing something repetitive and boring IS grinding, that's what grinding is. The KSP reward structure is unlocking stuff, so you unconsciously want to do that. The science needs to be more useful, not just as points.

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/instructions.php Here are the game download instructions (click on the steps and an image showing more details will be displayed): Log in to your KSP Store account.  Click the "My Account" button that will pop up after that.  Click the Download button next to Kerbal Space Program in your Products Purchased area.  Select the game version and Operating System of your choice. It is recommended to download the installer rather than the zip version.  Choose to save the file to your computer, the image may differ depending on your browser. 

Someone had posted somewhere that perhaps engineers should be able to disassemble ships. That would be cool. Different levels might have cutoffs of what they can remove. E0-3 might have limited removals (landing legs, solar panels, etc), while higher skill might allow for removing fuel tanks that are attached, or even an engine. This only really has utility for problems (say you are on the Mun, and you think you lack the dv to reach orbit, but maybe you can if you strip the lander). Another possible engineer use. Add in Life Support in a VERY simple way (like Snacks!). It has a single value for all consumable LS needs. In reality of course some LS is consumables, but a lot is recovering water, scrubbing air, etc. This is where the engineer would come in. E skill would allow longer duration flights as the engineer would be tweaking/maintaining the CO2 scrubbers, etc. Not by vast amounts, but enough to matter on really long flights. All those systems involve plumbing, and face it, they will require routine maintenance to be most effective. In game terms the E skill would decrease LS consumption by X% per day for the ship, perhaps X = skill level.

The base problem with scientists is that the science aspect of the game is so bad to begin with. Mission planners can tell any astronaut to pick up rocks on the Mun, for example, and the results will be the same. Where it differs is in the choice of rocks to pick. Regular astronauts can also run most experiments on orbit, but some might have a better chance of success with the actual scientist doing the work. It's also hurt in game by the fact that science is so easy to come by that any limits don't really matter. I think I prefer the idea that pilot, engineering, and science are not the sole role, but attributes like characters in a role playing game. Skill=0 acts like a current pilot with no level yet, add a new level below for the equivalent of a current Engineer acting as pilot (I'll use a - for this), which is "no skill." P0 can use SAS, P- cannot. 2/3 of new astronauts would then nominally be pilots. Jeb might start as Pilot 1, Engineer -, Scientist 0. Bill would be P0, E1, S-. Bob P0, E-, S1. New recruits get 2 zeros and a -. (or even 1 skill point worth divided by three where two 0s equal 1 skill, so you might randomly get a P-,E-,S1, or a P1, E-, S-) So Zebulon Kerman might start at P0, E0, S-. When they gain skill, it will be to one attribute. As soon as one attribute dominates, have the chance for additional skill much more likely in that attribute. So at his first skill upgrade, if Zeb gains P1, his next skill upgrades, instead of being an equal chance of P/E/S, might be 2/3 to gain in P, and 1/6 in each of E and S. Then the game should perhaps drop the science points awarded across the board, with increments up for S skill.

I've been saying this since difficulty settings came in. It is not difficulty, just a "grind" slider. Difficulty would require changes in gameplay difficulty.

The science stuff is easy to rationalize. It's not that they increase the amount transmitted, it's that they gather better data in the first place. 10 guys can each collect 10kg of rocks, but if ONE is a geologist, his 10kg might be more valuable than the 90kg from all the others combined.

I just PMed you the log and craft file. Sorry, fairing was on. My career might be corrupted, I think. I tried building it in a clean stock build, and it worked. I will move the craft file and see if that sticks in stock... - - - Updated - - - The stuff I sent you was loaded up in the modded install, but in sandbox, not my career… so it is the mod constellation (DRE/FAR/KJR/PF/SBFM) not my save game.