tater

Howdy. I apparently needed to type more than that, so you get this, as well

I'm not in favor of endless probe batteries. One, put a solar panel on it. If you are in eclipse… you planned poorly. It's just a probe (I have a couple such flying dutchmen because I failed to remember to deploy the solar panels). A possible solution is for a probe core to have "emergency mode." That's why you want RTGs.

Yeah, sounds like fodder for a rescue mission. I made a new lander, sent it to the Mun, decided to land just the other side of the terminator, in the dark, and realized late that I had forgotten to put back the spotlight I took off to move to a better spot. I said "what the heck" and landed anyway… was a little hot, not knowing where the ground was (was mountainous and the ground was at over 1000m), and blew up my engine (rest of the lander perfectly fine. Had to send a rescue mission (waited for daylight, this time).

Agreed, adding craters to the Mun would be pretty hilarious.

The end of that sentence was "from the standpoint of a couple different styles of play." One was a manager, who is not in fact a pilot. Apparently the other mod you suggest makes more sense from the 2d example of a pilot using computer tools. BTW, such tools should really be a development in the tech tree. Start with the nav ball, work up to even having the map view I agree completely. Make "stupidity" mean something. A suggestion might be to randomize the success A 100% stupid might get the node burn done wight +-5% to as bad as +-20%, whereas 10 0% stupid guy might be 0 to +-5% or something. Docking or landing… scary.

You know more about these mods than I do (never used any yet). So I will grant you about using the autopilot script mod when I play as the actual pilot. I was referring to the use of the Kerbals AS the pilots, however. If someone's style of play is to manage a space program, and work on "the big picture" without micro-managing every docking exercise by doing it themselves, it's entirely realistic to have them set the mission outline ("launch to this alt, circularize, transfer burn here to Mun, circularize and match with station there, deposit module") then have their employees, the astronauts, execute their mission. Realism can be about outcomes, too. If it models outcomes realistically, it can be realistic. People think that "full manual" in Silent Hunter is "realistic," and it is not at all (auto stinks in SH, don't get me wrong). Realism would require the player, who is the skipper, have his junior officers to the work that junior officers actually DO. The captain would not plot the target on the map. He would not even record the bearing, he'd call "mark," and a Lt. would read it off to another at the map (and another at the TDC would record it there, as well). Realism is not always doing everything yourself (alone in the cockpit, it might be, obviously ). In a 2 kerbal lander, for example, I'd expect the one not flying to keep me appraised of the altitude, for example. So some version of the astronauts doing routine things on their own doesn't bug me, and is not "unrealistic," IMHO. You can certainly argue that particular app is not what I am suggesting, I have no idea

I'm not terribly keen on spaceplanes currently because they seem too… optimistic. That said, pork jet's models make me want to anyway, lol. I'd love to see a rocket cargo bay.

I err on the side of "realism" in most every game I play (I tend to play "sim" games). Mechjeb actually seems entirely realistic from the standpoint of a couple different styles of play. As a manger of a space program, and even as a pilot (the shuttle flew itself most of the time, for example… pilot input on what to do, then the spacecraft does that). Once I have "programmed" a node in vanilla (all I have played so far), I've actually DONE the piloting. It's harder than RL to have to keep a dot on top of a dot on top of that. Doing everything yourself is not necessarily more realistic (though right now I think it's more fun that way). The best system would be a MechAstronaut (mechJeb, MechBob, MechDoodgun, etc). Each would have some "efficiency" based upon their intelligence (stupidity).

I'm fine with a management aspect, I imagine the people working on that end of gameplay are not the same as those working on physics---as long as the physics doesn't suffer. "Buffs" are a non-starter for me. If I read a review and they talked about that as a feature, I'd not bother following up on it, frankly. There are mechanisms to gain efficiency that are not dumb, and will do what they want. 1. Incremental engineering advances. Keep the standard parts, and add a variant or 2 for some of them. Early model Mk capsule, late model mk1 capsule, for example. Not the least bit unreasonable. 2. Astronaut skill. At some point, the astronauts should matter. Fly the way we do now, or fly like mechjeb apparently does now. You are the director, send the lads off to their doom, sorry, glory! I said GLORY! I'm totally fine with this, too. The the pilot skill can let them use the most optimal burns (100% efficiency), or waste fuel in different steps (down to whatever a full-stupidity pilot can manage). Both of those are entirely reasonable, the most realism-pushing person here could not likely complain (they would always have the choice to pilot manually as they see fit).

That's fine. Spend money/science and engineer a new part. Your rocket now has the SRB improved version. Not a temporary "power up." Awful.

Maybe jewels in space you can fly through and get more fuel ? Yeah, I'm in the "dislike greatly" camp as well. I've already bought the game, but if I saw a review and it had power ups, I'd not have bothered even with a demo. There are mechanisms to improve the engineering of parts, it's called the tech tree (meh as it is). Reuse existing models, and have sub-models of them (either identical model, or retexture with a plate on each that lists the model number, like "Mk1 Command Pod" vs "Mk1b Command Pod"). Improved models can have incremental improvements (more mono, slightly better SCS, better battery, less drag, lower mass, etc, etc).

"powerups."

Yeah, that's pretty terrible ("buffs"). The mechanism to add anything like that is astronaut quality, which is right now meaningless. And there is nothing you can possibly do about drag. The way to "spend science" to improve drag is called "a wind tunnel" then better engineering.

I agree, hence my suggestion that if ever a stock feature, it is NOT an "autopilot" but would in fact represent Jeb flying (50% stupidity) and would have errors. The maneuver nodes assigned him would be the mission planners at mission control planning the mission, he'd be doing the flying, and would have some error bars based on his skill (a CHANCE of error, not a standard error. Nominally, with the node set, you can chase the marker and correct if you over burn, for example, until you get the green check. The "error" on the part of the pilots might just waste fuel, as they'd chase the marker (abstracted) til they got it right, but would waste fuel doing so. Again, this is something I could see for larger space programs, along with the notion of "administering" such a program. Right now, astronauts mean exactly nothing in KSP, they are seat-fillers.

I'm actually thinking that executing the burn is OK, too at some point. Early, you want to fly everything, because it's cool. When you have a bunch of stuff "in the air" at once, it would be nice to have your astronauts actually do something. Any such implementation would idealy have them no more prefect than a real person at doing the operation. Heck, the tech tree might modify that. Mk1 pod has NO automation, for example. It would require the pilot, and any mechjeb like feature would use the pilot stupidity to add some error to any assigned piloting. A later command pod might have some automation, and it uses 1/2 pilot stupidity as the upper limit for error. Probe improvements in the tech tree have smaller and smaller error. (in any of these cases, if the player does it himself, then the burn is done however the player manages it). Note that in space, the errors are not a huge problem, even launch, or kerbin reentry. The Mun… I'd want to land myself, or at least take over near the surface, as a small % error is a Bad Thing near the ground. Ditto docking, I'd think (errors are where those stranded verbal contracts come from )

Any 3 linked asteroids except 3 a dead straight line is a triangle

I agree that in many ways some sort of auto feature is actually "more realistic" in terms of gameplay (JPL doesn't plan out a slingshot, then have a guy standing by with a stopwatch waiting to do the burn manually, etc). I'm pure stock just because I wanted to learn the game before I altered it---I really do think that there should be a stock mode that looks like this mod (it's a major PITA to have to remember that you have a probe someplace that news to make a burn in XXX game days, another in YY game days, etc, etc.

So here's a thought (as someone who has no mods yet): Why not include something like mechjeb in stock? Have the accuracy of it flying autopilot based on the Stupidity rating of the pilot on that mission (most stupid is off by say, up to +-20% altitude up to +-20 degrees inclination, +-XX seconds of executing a node maneuver, etc (it's 0-20, so they might do perfectly, worst os the number cited)), least stupid by up to +-1% or something, in between is in between. More stupidity=more error, lower stupidity=lower error (tweak numbers for balance). This would make the management and tracking of astronauts actually useful, and the devs have said we will track pilot careers, etc. (maybe their stupidity can be trained downwards). Then you can always pilot yourself with even the stupidest pilot, and perhaps he gets "learning" points for success and gets smarter, and if it's to the point of being boring, you let the kerbs do it, but in a "legit" way from a space program management sense.

I've heard "marketing" used this way before to mean trade/sales. In North American english, anyway, marketing is promoting, advertising, branding, etc..

I posted a story in the "What did you do today…" thread, and it was a screw up that forced me to rescue myself. More fun than what I had planned, actually. Mistakes, catastrophes, etc… can be really fun.

I managed to have a docking accident tonight. Made a small science station around the Mun (MPL, and some extra fuel---getting that there was a bit of a problem after a staging problem lost part of a tank of fuel). Did a landing on Mun, collected a bunch of science. Went to station to process said science… and managed to bump the station with the outrigger pods on the pander that are (arm, WERE) held on with separators. That seemed to set those off, given the velocity the fuel/science Jr pods went zinging off. With my tiny fuel reserve I went to LKO where I have a station, used the last of my fuel getting within 200m, and docked using the stations RCS. Not bad.

I play KSP manually on a keyboard and mouse in vanilla… so far without a whole lot of skill

What does mechjeb do, exactly?

Apparently the devs are not keen on random failures. Makes sense… "yeah, finally made it to Jool!" (BOOM in background) "WTF, my fuel tank exploded? Now? #$#@!$#!$" Bad idea. Got it. On the other hand, problems can actually be fun to play (some of my best flight sim moments have been flying badly damaged warplanes home). Last night I was trying to move a small science station to munar orbit, and I screwed up my staging order. Long story short, my choice was to revert, or to dock with the now staged away part, and try to finish getting it to munar orbit. The docking ports for this are (stupidly) on the side. It's grossly unbalanced. Pushing it is nontrivial, in other words. I turned on my RCS to aid the gyro, and used low thrust to keep from spinning. Works OK unless you need a long burn at apoapsis. Still, a different problem, non-trivial, but what the heck, my life isn't at stake It got me thinking of something I posted in another thread. What if the tech tree would unlock new, "X" tech from one node ahead of the one you unlocked? That would be past the new stuff you just unlocked, but it's the alpha version. Not ready for primetime. Unlocking a new node in career mode would result in testing contracts for the new parts, or the parts would default to all having the "test" bottom on right click, possibly. You'd use them as usual, and and after X uses or test results (variable by the part), they'd present a message that "Rocketdyne engineers have realized their gross math errors, and have improved their engine!" or whatever. The part is now as advertised. Failure chances would be random (most will work fine). Random failures would be: Lowered performance: Lower Isp, higher fuel use, lower capacity of tank, uses more power than expected, lower ejection force, lower impact resistance, etc. Some minor range. These might be the most common flaws. Results in test data, likely doesn't change mission success at all (unless you spam a new rocket with tons of X tech, maybe). Wrong performance: Gimble doesn't work, or locks at some angle., tanks leak fuel, etc. These are bad results that might compromise a mission. Cool graphics (fuel spraying out, etc). Catastrophic failure: We'd stay away from "BOOM! ship gone" failures (no fun), but think Apollo 13 as a worst case. Engines stop working, fuel tank pops, etc. Stuff that makes you think of "plan B." If it is hilarious to have the very rare BOOM, by all means, add that as a 1% chance or something If you don't use the X tech, after some time (or science gained, or a new node unlocked, something, it becomes regular tech anyway. This is a way to preview new tech by choice---at a risk. Worst case, you mount a rescue mission, or have to stage away the rocket, and do a suborbital flight.

Frankly, it might be fun to have a number of systems to chose from at some point (post 1.0), each with different levels of "realism" WRT world size and spacing. Maybe a paid add-on (devs gotta eat, too).