Hi folks I just bought KSP (then spent the whole weekend building rockets and exploring). I'm delighted by it, WIP-status though it is - it's already a 4.5 stars game and it's not even done yet. I know that when you're looking at something all day you don't see rough edges and counter-intuitive UI elements because they're obvious to you. So I thought I'd share my first-48-hours experiences. Overall, given the complexity of the game the UI is a wonder of usability. I'm really impressed. I had issues, but not nearly as many as I expected. (In the following I've left out things that I saw in the "already suggested" and "what not to suggest" pinned topics, but this isn't a feature request list so much as a list of things I found counter-intuitive, confusing, or hard to figure out from a UI and gameplay perspective) Things I got really stuck on and had to dig around on the 'net for help were: Why my probe just stopped responding to controls. (Out of batteries, hadn't invented solar yet). The UI should respond to attempted control input in a way that indicates that the craft can't respond. Showing a partial pulldown of the resources menu and flashing the power bar would be very helpful. How to collect the kerbal astronaut in orbit once I'd mostly matched orbit with him. Having to press the [ key to switch control to nearby craft isn't discoverable or intuitive. Should be able to click on craft within range to switch control via menu. If it's out of range or not remote controllable the disabled menu text should say so. Recovering boosters. Or rather, that you can't. The tutorial needs to cover this IMO, I got really frustrated wondering why my boosters with their adequate parachute loads still seemed to just vanish. Especially when the description of the booster talks about it being designed to be recovered... EVA controls. It's easy to get into EVA, but what then? It doesn't help that the kerbal sometimes likes to leap away from the capsule when you exit, and did when I first tried EVA. So you have to figure out how to enable RCS on their suit (and that you have RCS on all EVA suits) and how to fly them back to the capsule. This is the kind of situation where situational help would be good - "Hey, this is your first EVA, want a hand?". Docking. I had to hit the 'net to find out about docking mode and how to use my RCS for precision alignment. Still have no idea how to yaw/pitch when in docking mode, without switching out and using normal flight mode controls for pitch/yaw. Things I worked out myself, but that were barriers, were: How to recover a vessel once it's landed, and that when a mission is done you can just go to the space center then visit the tracking station, there's no explicit "end of mission" unless you crash and die horribly. The orbiting tutorial should be extended to cover landing and recovery. My capsules plummeting to the ground and exploding after their chutes were open and I was on time warp. Problem was that in time warp, especially with radial chutes, the physics seems to break quite easily at the moment of chute opening. Should disable/pause time warp for parachute opening. When you accidentally enter cockpit view, getting out isn't obvious. So, those lander legs, they work better if you extend them! (They're pretty handy even when they're closed, as my first Kerbal VTOL lander demonstrated). It's non-obvious how to open them. Navball "target" mode. I think I've worked it out, but some docs on it would be really nice. Especially since it snaps into target mode when you approach something you set as a target, and suddenly prograde/retrograde aren't *orbit* prograde/retrograde anymore but they look the same... Orbit matching the rescue kerbal. Got there in the end, but a tutorial for matching orbits would be nice, and could be combined with navball target mode and with EVA flight controls Radial symmetry in construction mode. Awesome once you figure it out. Tweaks in construction mode, for changing booster fuel, etc. Subassemblies in construction mode. Pretty sure I found some bugs too: Electrical charge level resets to 100% on a vessel without solar panels, so short lived probes can go longer than they should. Sometimes. Seems to be to do with returning control to flight center and launching other vessels or switching control to others. Possibly also reverting to design after crash? Haven't pinned it down yet. On my system (Intel graphics, Fedora 20 Linux x64) the labels above the crew pictures are unreadable, there's no visible text in the buttons for EVA etc. When constructing vessels using symmetry, if you build a ring of boosters then want to put something in the middle, the central object won't snap to the surrounding ones. Same as above, when trying to put an object inside a ring of boosters (big fuel tank, big liquid booster, whatever) sometimes it seems to work, but actually you've created one copy of the object for each radially symmetrical booster. The inner objects overlap and ignore clipping, taking up the same space. I had six LV-12 boosters overlapping so they looked like one earlier. (In case you're wondering why I'd do such a thing: I was trying to get an LV-12 booster to escape velocity for a contract, so it was payload. Which meant a ring of huge multi-stage boosters to get it up there.) Sometimes when I'm trying to place a reinforcing strut it seems to disappear inside the structure of the rocket. It still exists, but you can't find it (there's no parts list to manipulate separately). When trying to use multiple vertical decouplers for structural integrity on large booster stacks only one of them would snap the two objects together correctly. The other one wouldn't "click" to the other side. The game puts gantries at the rocket stage they're connected to, even though it never makes sense to put them anywhere but on the first stage. It's easy to rearrange the stages, but annoying if you don't notice and the rocket goes nowhere. Or BOOM. Phew! Finally, some more general comments. Career random mission rewards are so lavish that there's little incentive to go exploring except for fun, and you tend to get technology trivially easily by doing ridiculous things. Random missions need a filter for absurdity. Can I launch an LV-12 integrated liquid booster stage to escape velocity and fire it? Yes, I can, I did it, but why would anybody do it? (Restrict first-stage heavy booster rockets from requests to test them in orbit / at escape velocity). Drag is given as a number, but it's not clear what it means. If I put an aerodynamic nose cone on my big flat booster top will that add 0.2 drag? Or reduce net drag? (I suspect this just isn't implemented/finished). Why are there rocket adapters when I can just connect a big rocket stage to a small one and vice versa? If my vessel will explode violently the moment the physics engine starts, is there any chance of warning me "hey, this might want a gantry"? Not that I mind the light show, but it gets tiresome having to go back and add a gantry. And I'm forgetful. Motors should show burn time and total impulse, both in the specs for the default and for a given fuel and thrust limit when tweaked. It's a pain working it out if you want to sync up some solid boosters with a liquid core or similar. It's really hard to work out stage weights and total impulses to sanity check whether a design might work without flying it. Why do control system torque rings seem to help with pitch/yaw too? ... and after all that, again, thanks for an awesome game. I'm still so hooked it's hard to stop playing before the birds are waking in the morning.
