Arugela

Unless this has changed since 0.9 and 1.0 science isn't buying tech. It's representing the development of tech overtime. It's actual RND and scientific discoveries predating them. The buying of the parts represents buying tech or licenses to use those specific parts. So on it's face the science system of unlocking tech is not unrealistic persay. It represents progress of science over time. the game basically represents the beginning of a space agency and the development of technology over time from a shadow of the real world development.

First an idea for a surface plane adjustor. Basically, like a red line that shows the angle of attack of the ground starting at zero. This could be a mode up top or down with the show COM,COT, and COL icons. The red line/plane is adjustable(length, width, etc.) and can be be shifted in degrees to atleast one degree of accuracy or more if desired. This plane/line can be moved up and down to make wheels stick to them. This will then move the wheels onto a perfect ange to it and line them up in all directions and on all planes. You can do things like pull the wheels off manually and unstick them by clicking and dragging off etc. Whatever is needed to change them how you wish. I would allow multiples of these lines potentially if doable and be able to click or indicate a wheel is invisible to a given line if possible just in case someone uses multiple wheel setups on one craft. Or maybe even a the abilityt to dictate it to wings or other objects to adjust and see the angles. Maybe if the line can have it's length adjusted not to hit everything or as much as needed to only adjust what you want. It could even be called a ruler or adjuster mode. If it a mode you could simply change teh mode or turn off it's modes to unatached while not moving then use one line to go over part by part. or do multiple and help align and design the ship how you want. Second, a type of welding that cost money to strengthen the bonds of items near each other or already attached. If they are directly attached it will increase the strength of the attachment so they are stronger. This will cost money somehow. A nice alternative to the strut. It would also be useable in places struts couldn't be. If they are not attached but come close enough to each other you can weld them to a basic level of attachment for a fee. Allowing slighty more complex designs with greater stabiltity. There are lots of places this is useful now but the wobliness of many parts make it's impossible to use them and much of the time blow up the ship on the runway. This could help that! Once attached you can use the normal sliding tools and they will move together like one item. But in every other way they are seperate besides the value giving them some attachment. Then they are exposed to the rest of the game engine logic and act like independent parts in every other way according to whatever the current game logic uses hopefully. If used in conjenction with the mirror radius tool this could add multiple joints and act like real welding a little to increase the strength based on the number of welds done etc. Each one increasing the value of the bond between parts. Maybe select two parts that are close enough and then adjust the mirror/radial and number of joints and click like any normal item to place a spot weld or something else. maybe a special new option that does full welds around the items or other welding options for increased strength in various ways. One example being a full weld around both items. Or some sort of a double weld. The current being things like 8 spots around or 6 etc. Unless you used the 1/2/3/4/6/8 to represent these other welds. Examples: Mirror: 1 weld is single spot; 2 weld is symetrical spot welds. Each from source. They can use snap tool to help allign symentrically in greater number of single spots. Radial: 1 is a longer single weld on spot. A dash!; 2 is a symetrical dash folllowing the existing rules of radial; 3 increased to something else up to 8 for a full or double weld. Use exsiting logic in real welding and give them values and cost! Also, if you weld items stack on top of each other like two xenon tanks taking up the same space. When you select the first tank to weld it could become unselectible/invisible to the selection process. Applying this to each object selected could allow a second or even third object to be selected. and allow several items to be stacked making the already existing logic to stack the items more sane and doable! While not taking away from weight and other stats. Whole assemblies could be welded to increase strength and make planes much nicer to design as a whole! This would also give alot more versatility to exisinting parts without breaking their prexisting balance! To make welding different it could not be undoable in the normal sense in the vehicle bay and rocket building screen. You could make it so you can break the weld and remove it but you cannot get the money back! 8) This would make it something different in carreer modes over struts. Also welds would not have mass and would not add to the parts count or have any specific physics attributes as the parts themselves contain this. They only indicate the addition of join strength between existing parts and only creat what is needed to give that value between parts. Also removale of a weld could cost a small fee. Making it even more unique as an option. You could also allow engineers to do basic weldings in the feild somehow to fix things. Maybe a resource could be used to do this. not sure how. This could be particularly useful if welds can be broken by forces in flight etc. And give use to know how much to weld(IE smaller welds vs bigger welds vs cost!) It would give engineers or a good purpose to help maintain structural integrity of the vehicle in flight. Repairing welds could be very useful! Maybe the weld repairs are tallied for after a mission and taken from your cash! This would not replace struts. Struts can't currently get items too close together. Where welds would be most useful or usable period! Struts are most useful where parts are farther apart or where and angle exist. Usually where a weld would be impossible! i currently try to use strutsh were a weld would be the best option. But no such thing currently exists. This would save more headaches than I could count. This is very good for heavier space planes over rockets. Possibly good selectively on rockets also! I'm not familiar enough with rockets to say though. I imagine they could potentially be endlessly useful. Welds could also be usable where parts curcurmferance or edges touch allowing more unsual craft to be designed. My existing thought was where the circumfereances align. But that does not have to be the case. But then the game needs logic, if it doesn't already exist, to detech the edges of the items! Which might also solve a few other issues in the game currently! 8) Though that may be needed for unatached parts also unless you can detect proximity and do needed adjustments. I'm unaware what would be needed. The preslection of parts may make that easy to accomplish regardless.... I beleive these two changes would deal with 50% of the problems people have with building craft currently and take alot of headache out of needless building issues and give people more time to focus on the other more important aspects of the craft. specifically flying it and it's other design issues like TWR, fuel, aerodaynamics, etc. Tools to find the current angle from 0 without moving stuff could be nice also. Especially for wing placements. Preferably on atleast the X,Y, and Z axis minimum.

I thought they fixed that in 1.0? What happened to the hiding non exposed objects thing they were working on?

That is what I was refering too. But I meant the wing setup. It has similar wing angles and somewhat relative engine placement. That is what I meant by B-52ish. And as far as I can tell it flies like it. The only difference may be the position of the tail fin to the wings and stuf. You could extend the fuselage or place the engines under the wing and put it back farther. I wonder how it would fly differently. As is it flies pretty stable. Outside of using the air breaks for flight stability that is. Maybe the tail back farther would stabalize the nose. And I was using the airbreaks to watch the crafts aerodynamics. It lets you see it as you fly better. That is part of the test aircraft part! 8)

http://www./download/tsquyll2xn6tygd/Aero_tester_2.craft This is my first, as I would call it, flyable craft since returning since the 1.0 release. Trying to figure out aerodynamics! 8) I think I've discovered what the B-52 is like to design and fly a bit. The tilted wings and help with take off and the forward engines are for stability. I've been putting my center of thrust behind my center of lift. Old habbit from before 1.0 Having it behind gives alot of stability. At least to this setup. It was interesting compared to my other craft. It is also more forgiving to shifting COM's! Good for bomber/loader craft! I think I just need to figure out how to stabalize it's nose without SAS on and figure out how to get into orbit in an SSTO again!

I have older pre 1.0 craft that I loaded in to play with them and possibly other new one with longer names. I can't see the side of them that shows the pictures of the craft. I can see the default ones but mine always have long craft file names. 1. Is this a bug that can be fixed. 2. Is there a way you guys could change the window logic to allow it to expand so it's not an issue. Basically a side and corner expander to just see stuff. It would probably be the easier solution. This is for the load window in the VAB and SPH where you select your ship after hitting load.

the Ion I proposed would work exactly like the small one. It's just a size larger for parts sanity. It's scalled to everything. Even the change in weight is only down the ammount of one Ion engine. So it is 1/25 lighter. But you could just go with 6.25t over 6t. I tried to balance that by adding an excessive ammount of electrictiy(250/s). I thought that would balance it out. But it does work as well as other ships whne you apply the appropriate thrust. It's just heavier at the base changing the Delta V range if you used nothing else. It's basically only good for deep space travels and interplanetary. It helps give room for other fuels for landing and what not. If you are refering to larger diameter than a nuke I don't see the point. You could use the smaller diameter from the nuk for space stations and heavier objects with just that. You would never really need bigger. In face it would be a really good station mover if you put at that size compared to just satelites. 50 is about the most you'll ever need per engine for orbit. And notice it weighs around twice the ammount of Nuclear scaled. Although the fuel is alot more than twice as light. You'd have to compare the consumption rates to see when one is better. Ion is currently 0.243/s per unit of thrust at a fuel weight of around 0.0001 if I recall correctly(this is before 1.0 release). That is 0.001215 weight per second for a 50 thrust engine. You must also includes electrical weight though which I haven't counted as it is complex. It weighs a certain ammount per electric charge stored and whatever if you are rechargeing but doesn't drop weight like other fuel sources. If you count stored electricity as 0.00005 the 50 thrust engine would take 218.5 per second for 0.010925 weighing 0.01214 per second maximum. this is curbed by the fact you don't have to store full ammounts of electricity cutting down the weight making it dependent on ship design. Recharging electricity is equally a variable and can be added back to the storage ammount for a small ammount. So it depends on the ship design. And that is dependent on what exactly you design it for. But the weight will never be the full ammount as you cannot feasibly store that much electricity and need it. And any recharge and time you use to fix this is going to be likely less in the scheme of things. You would need millions of units of electricty to get close to full weight. But you can easily get fractions of it if you want for a full space ship. I've done 100k-500k on larger mk2 ships and it works very well(Those were weightless parts before 1.0 though.). But it is a bit of a convenience if you will depending on what you are willing to put up with. Nuclear is now oxidizerless, and unless they have changed the weight those oxidizer and rocket fuel weigh 0.005 per unit at a rate of around 1.53/s? That is 0.00765/s which is a fuel that always decreases until/unless refilled. so if you are familiar with electricity you can see they are both pretty viable. it's just a matter of parts counts atm. And which type of ship you want. I always try both Ion and nuclear as one is a good backup for the other! 8) And a high electricity ship has alot of benefits in space. Or it used to. It's not a bad thing to get experience building. Edit: BTW, is that vasmir engine something they are going to put into the game?

Yea, it is a bit silly the only engine that can't use time warp is the one that should have it the most. If anything it should be the only one that can use it during burn! Even if you do sacrifice to use them largescale you have to content a lot of weight as tradeoff. So there is no harm in that gamedesign. You pay to use Ion on anything larger than a probe. You just end up using a different designs trying to figure out how to use everything efficiently and making sure the fuel weight pays off per given usage. Which I'm not good at doing yet btw! 8) I'm still experimenting to figure it out. But that is hard with the parts count and the fact I have to refigure the game out now that I just started replaying it. Particularly since I like to make ships that are 1000+ parts...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_thruster "The thrust produced by a Hall thruster varies depending on the power level." If this is true should it have low thrust in atmosphere like other engines? I get the impression they recorded these Specific impulse values on the ground. Should they really be that low in gravity? "Compared to chemical rockets, the thrust is very small, on the order of 83 mN (0.60pdl.) for a typical thruster operating at 300 V, 1.5 kW. For comparison, the weight of a coin like the U.S. quarter or a 20-cent Euro coin is approximately 60 mN (0.43pdl.). As with all forms of electrically powered spacecraft propulsion, thrust is limited by available power, efficiency, and specific impulse." How accurate is this compared to the games engine? And is that ISP value for the xenon or the electricity. Somsething about the game wiki makes me think it's the electricity... http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/IX-6315_%22Dawn%22_Electric_Propulsion_System [TABLE] [TR] [TD=colspan: 2]Electricity required[/TD] [TD] 3.666 âš¡/s[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD] 0.087 âš¡/s[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Couldn't they let you get full thrust in atmoshphere/gravity from this by increasing the electical intake or something?

Do you understand that is unusable. The point is to remove parts count so you can use it on slightly larger vessels like MK1's. I currently use 33 engines plus stuff to stick it together to produce 66 thrust for an MK1 vessel with one of these engine clusters. I could have one with one part that has almost the sameproportions that gives as in my example 50 thrust for the same basic weight ratio. If you simply scaled it up it would be @ 25x: Size: small Weight: 6.25t Thrust: 50 Xenon Gas: 12.15/s Electricity: 218.5/s I just modified it a little. I could go back to: Xenon Gas: 12/s Electiricty: 220/s I think the small change in weight is a nice bonus. Gives a reason to use it over the smaller on besides parts count. And I guess 12.15 isn't a big difference than 12. You could call it a shorthand and say it has the same ISP.

The engine I built was an ion cluster. Why are you against a larger ion engine? My point was to make one Ion engine that is the same diameter as the nuclear and jet engines. What is wrong with that?

If you don't add this to the game I will have to build one of these again. And you don't want me building one of these again!! >< Let alone it's bigger brother with 333+engines!! *leers* BTW, I could stand that bad boy on end and fly it like a vplane!! 8D I think this hits an important note about space planes. Waistfulness is the luxury of space planes... The bigger and more waisteful the more cool it is! it takes brains to be efficient. It takes guts to strap 100 uneeded engines with jet fuel to your behind!! ><

Is KSP going completely 64 bit.(I'm hoping for this.) it would make it alot easier on steam. Wouldn't have to find that stupid command and check which version I'm running and worry sometimes if I saved it correctly when I get paranoid!

It's a nightmare. Once you have forgotten what it is like to have to install all your drivers from scratch with a cd for each it's a nightmare to go back. You'll install and then try something thinking, "Oh my software is auto installed or easy to get going." then you realize you need 50 drivers like how you need to install 50 programs in linux and realize that the terminal and a webpage to copy commands it allot faster than the hell that is installing drivers from a cdrom... 8\ And the only reason linux doesn't already run all of your pograms is because of "legal" issues and directx and the like. Or it would easily be able to run everyone one of them. they tried along time ago but got cut short.. Sadly. It's not a technical issue it's an artificial legal one. It's the only "Anti-competitive" reason microsoft still exists. Or atleast has a monopoly and isn't helping improve software in general. It's the modern swamp we call software development!

Good point. I didn't think of that. I'll have to try to recalculate it. On that point. Anyone good at translating ISP? The wonderful people at KSP didn't think to fully lable everything. Nor the wiki. I don't know what they are in.... Don't have the energy to figure it out either. 8\ I also should have added a yes and no about if you actually use Ion. that would have helped the poll tremendously!

Rush it! Rush it real good!!

My suggestion up top is like a hair more efficient on the xenon gas(A very small hair) to go with the slightly heavier new xenon tanks. And more expensive on the elctricity to compensate. I dont think you can afford multiples off the original drive and be usable. It needs to be similar or it would not be capable of doing anything. It already is basically a deep space only drive. So it only is there to get from point a to point b from orbit or even after leaving orbit. I'm also changing the idea to just 250 electric. It's only fair it gains a little xenon for a larger ammount of electricity.

You'd be shocked how much power you can get to one of these! 8p There are still massless parts with electricity right?!

I stopped playing when 1.0 came out. I'm trying to relearn this and having issues. My main issue is how to take off now. Every time I try I get the wobbles and lean to the sie and crash. It's like it's impossible to takeoff without every micro inch of your plane trying to destroy you.. And I see now way to look into this or deal with it in designe. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong atm. Is it possible to have too much thrust now or something. It's like all of those old problems with landingear are alive and kicking. I'm currently flying a 25-50t aircraft with 4 turbojets 1 rapier up and running on takeoff... I have tricycle setup. Every time I hit near takeoff speeds it dives to one side. I'm using the large landing gear.

I currently use Ion alot. I use it for my interplanetary travels(I used it before the 1.0 release patch). I have always used them. But to do so on my larger ships I need to make a weird array based on a medium AI circle/drone core(the one you can start with with full functionality) and I put 8x(1x1) parts(If I'm not mistaken) around the outside and sink them down and move 8x Ion plus a middle one until I get a 33 Ion engine array. As you can imagine this is annoying. And as the game cannot do certain things with 4-8x of an alreayd complex array this makes making multiple of these and making peoper shortcuts rather annoying. and as Ions are very fun to play with I'm wondering who else would like a next size up Ion engine? And what stats should it have? I can get a 33 Ions on the size of the next engine(The same size as a nuclear engine!). That is 66thrust. I think it should be around 50 thrust so it's not as good per area but use the same Ion to make the small larger Ion engine fuel wise to the New Big Ion container what the smaller one is to the 700xenon tank. And maybe a little less or more efficient electric wise. Probably less as it has less thrust. Maybe for it's size it uses the same elctricty as the 66 I can fit on a small area. Or it has the same base electric per thrust. Somewhere around 220/s? Not sure on the weight. I'll get a more specific proposale once I get in game and post it. Compare the weight of the two devices. It should probably be a little lighter as the new bigger xenon tanks are heavier compared to the 700 ones. I would love the larger Ion and stick like 2- 4 of them on a nice 50t ship for space travel! 8) Ion would be fun to use then. Or can you not replenish Xenon gas yet? I would still use one regardless. Saves other fuel for takeoff and landing procedures. Maybe use it for first flights and the Nuclear engine for return after the ship is lighter! Edit: And it would hopefully have a node on the end like normal ion thrusters so I can stick stuff on the end. I always build onto my ion engines! The engine in this slide show weighs exactly 9.0t with the extra parts and 8.25t with just 33 ion engines. So a 50 thrust engine could weigh around 5-8t with 6t being about even per thrust with a little off for it's trouble.. Also twice that of a nuclear engine! http://s1262.photobucket.com/user/PicsMe101/slideshow/KSP It would be what the wiki calls a small part. The same as a nuclear and most engines. If I were to make a guess at the stats: Size: Small Weight: 6t? Thrust: 50 Xenon Gas: 12/s(slightly more efficient than the smaller ion per thrust) Electricty: 250/s (250 is a little less efficient per thrust) ISP: ?(ASL)-?(VAC) Stats of engine block in picture: Ion engines: 33 Weight: 9t (8.25t if only engines) Thrust: 66 Xenon Gas: 16/s(approx.) Electricty: 288/s(approx.) ISP: 100(ASL)-4200(VAC) I imagine it would look just like the small one but bigger. Would explain how it gets less thrust as it has a bigger circle in the middle possibly. While mine is stacked. Edit2: BTW, a proportional engine would be this: (@25x) Size: Small Weight: 6.25t Thrust: 50 Xenon Gas: 12.5/s Electricty: 218.5/s ISP: 100(ASL)-4200(VAC)

This game sorely needs an in game library with all of the updated and hopefully thorough info on everything you have bought (or could buy. Maybe you can get the library info from contracts for new tech) in game to study in game with up to date and correct information. Having no info in game on a wiki run by random people is not a good thing for a game based on any amount of math. (Especially in this type of game.) The game has no explanation for itself whatsoever. (Less than most crappy MMOrpgs.) And there is a lot of confusion on lots of things and we should not be using trial and error to figure out. We need a good bed of complete information available in game. And, as I hinted at before, whether that is all available in a sandbox or acquired in game via career/science games is another thing. But it really needs to be in game so people don't have to scavenge for info. You would still have lots of room for people to ask for help on the forum about what it all means and getting help understanding it. But not having absolute certain information on all aspects of all items to potentially study should be considered absolutely unacceptable. This is an arcade like game to some extent but an arcade like game based on science. So it should act as such and have what it needed for all players. It's not like there is a university to go to before playing the game. Though there could be. But that would effectively be the same thing. As an idea they could automate it also to some extent to make it see the and use the games data to produce certain numbers. Then you can see modifications also in game to be certain. then link those libraries to the VAB and rocket building(Extended info) if you wanted to very easily. You could have a button to turn it on and off for the extra info. Or look it up in flight if you have a link to gather the info. A sufficient link to get back to and receive info from the base. I wonder if the ship would have to worry about hard drive space during flight?! Unless you had on one the ship or part of certain cockpits. Could be nice to IVA and look up any part you have on your ship in case you have an Apollo 13 type incident.. Maybe it could help upgrade the crew by making them study during missions.... Extra exp bonuses for crew?

On a secondary note. Does the intake with 40 fuel that is inline(the cooler) do anything besides add air intake. Does in improve the engines at all or is it just a reskinned version of the old ones?

Can you still air hog and get up to 40k-70k with just jets and push the apoapsis now that we have physics/new aerodynamics? I've implemented a redo of an old plane but I only got to like 17k before my basic engine(it uses rapier turbo and a basic) gets a message saying air compression failed on the basic engine at 17kish and it starts to go downward instead of up. I haven't figured the new aerodynamics out yet. I was flying straight up and all three engines were running. BTW, what is that new message. usually it just says air intake out or something. http://www./download/cc4wy2bca4oatfe/AEIOU_Ion_Craft_1_0_V1.craft <- File craft. Do you have to do apply some special techniques to get it up that high now? Are the older approaches just not applicable anymore?

Should this auto update in steam? Will it auto update the Linux 64 bit version?

I was hoping for more fuel adjustment stuff in flight also. Either in a side window you cold bring up and/or in a screen in the IVA. I think they should maximize the IVA then make alternative windows for everything in flight mode potentially. they have the buttons and interface in the IVA's potentially regardless. No reason not to use them all. Could be an advantage of each cockpit. some have more button features than others. Even the individual seats could have different stuff and you need kerbals to be seated in them or move the one kerbal around to do it. Then we would have realistic cockpits. Even something as simple as Shift + Right click or Alt(right shift) + right click to select all of that one tank type or all tanks would be nice. Then you slide that one tanks fuel and the rest follow.