tater
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Everything posted by tater
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http://www.spacex.com/Mars The massive window on front is pretty goofy.
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Yeah, they show it landed, and then they show it returning to Earth. Ambitious. Now for the pixie dust mine to hit paydirt.
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42 raptors... OK.
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I don't disagree, actually, it's complex to be sure. -
Time warping is FINE, and should be encouraged in career. It has no downside, it makes time progress, as it should without the player having to be bored. I agree that there then needs to be a reason not to time warp at some level, but really budget would constrain this alone, if budget were a thing. It could be via fixed costs per unit time associated with facilities (buy-in might be lowered for upgrades, but there would then be some annual overhead forever). It could be via a requirement to have a certain number of flights per year or face a rep penalty (which would impact future contracts, etc). Its all intertwined, obviously, but you are correct that there needs to be incentives and disincentives from multiple directions.
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Ah, well time-based R&D is the only thing that's adding time as a thing. More sensible deadlines would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but without something that actually adds time as a thing, the declines are meaningless. World firsts don't add time as a thing at all that I see. R&D taking time would help a lot, but again, that leads to the perfectly fine use of time warp. I would have R&D take time (funds and science might be currency to speed it up). I would add life support. Then the contracts can all have sensible time limits.
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In real play: Reach orbit: Kerbin hour 2? (is that too late? It might literally be minutes.) Reach the Mun? 70 days? The trip is more than 70 minutes, so the lower boundary value is higher... hours are not impossible, a few days into career at most. I'm not seeing any "time" being created.
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I use the time to unlock even the fantasy spaceplane parts as a metric of how rapidly people can accomplish virtually anything in the game. Once parts (and funds) are not an issue, you can literally go anywhere, easily. The time limits on world firsts are good, I like any "race" sensibility, but if the player can go anywhere by day 200, what difference does it make to set dates after that, and setting any before... you're already going to the Mun literally a couple days after inventing spaceflight. Stuff needs to be slowed or stretched out in time.
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I like the idea of presenting players---particularly new players with things like decent launch windows, but I don't see how this makes time meaningful. Given that you can unlock the tech tree long before even the first Duna transfer window, how does this spread things out? I'm of the opposite view WRT time warp. I think it's a good thing, and should in fact be encouraged so that days pass.
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The ability for rovers to self drive is only going to increase over time as self-driving matures, too.
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Yep. How many probes could be sent for the same budget of mass and treasure?
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Why send people?
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Make it like the Philae harpoons---only they should actually work.
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ComNet Ideas for maximum coverage and minimum upkeep
tater replied to Leafbaron's topic in KSP1 Discussion
The current Comsat paradigm is exactly wrong for gameplay. Right now, the "relay" antennas are just as long ranged as the "direct" types. As a result, spam a few big relays, and everything talks to everything else. The opposite should be true. The "RA" antennas should be direct, high gains. The relays should be the shorter ranged types (anything below the 100G stuff, really, at least until late in the tree). If done this way, you actually have to think. You send a high gain with a relay to Jool to service your Jool mission instead of just leaving your RA 100 someplace in the solar system and forgetting about it, since they will form a net with zero effort. -
That era's version of the Tu-4.
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There is no way at all to extrapolate Buran safety. It flew once. It might have exploded the next time killing the crew and everyone at the pad---who knows. Skylon is infinitely safer than Buran. It's modern tech, and it's never failed!
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Generally they'd have a "shadow shield" at the bottom of the stack, just above the NTR (or other nuke). Basically a massive disk. The crew would be at a distance, but within the solid-angle that is the shadow of that shielding. Von Braun moon lander concept.
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Unlikely.
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The Isp is spot on. Just use that LH2 before it boils off.
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The economics of reuse are entirely unknown until there are a decent number of such launches so that the actual costs can be determined. Every shutdown due to an accident ups the cost of the program, and the total cost per launch should really be treated as a little higher as a result (depending on how they amortize such stuff). I still maintain a Mars colony is somewhat absurd (sadly).
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(HST, but looks pretty much the same as KH 11/12) That's pretty much it, as there is no reason to build anything that looks anywhere except Earth from a military standpoint.
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I was gonna say, they need ice axes for self-arrest. The scientists should have a rock hammer, though, right?
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Since random failures are not a thing, and since kerbals have insane dv in their EVA system, perhaps such rag doll events could actually damage their EVA system. Since it's not "random," is should be OK with Squad, right? Rag doll, and the RCS starts leaking, until it's gone. LS mods could let it damage the LS, so that leaks.
