Hotaru

I believe this is a known issue with fuel switch mods (Interstellar Fuel Switch and Stock Fuel Switch), if you install them mid-game, all tanks on ships in-flight magically re-fill. Same thing happened to me when I tried installing Stock Fuel Switch. As far as I know the only solutions are: Land & recover all ships before installing the mod, manually edit the fuel levels in the persistence file after installing the mod, start a new save with the mod installed, or just go with it. Call it a reverse Kraken or something. If all you need are liquid fuel options for nukes, another option is this mod which adds LF-only variants of all the stock LF/O tanks using a Module Manager patch. (Listed for 1.0.2 on KerbalStuff, but I expect it still works fine in 1.0.4.) That's what I did for my current career save, I'd rather have Fuel Switch (less part catalog clutter) but it was preferable to starting over. Hope this helps.

Getting back to KSP after a couple months off. Still in 1.0.2 since it's working pretty smoothly & I don't want to have the laws of physics change mid-career. Probably just going to wait for 1.1 before starting over. Working on my first Kerballed interplanetary missions: Fitting out the Rumfoord expedition to Duna and Ike in LKO. The Rumfoord is just about the biggest ship I've ever built in KSP, and if the Duna expedition is successful it might be refitted for a mission to Jool. Was also the first mission of the Starlet Mark II passenger shuttle, with upgraded engines, docking lights, and a few other improvements. Also launched the core module of the much less ambitious Constant mission to Eve and Gilly.

I've tried running KSP on OSX, Windows x86 with DX9, DX11, and OpenGl, Linux (Ubuntu) x64, and Windows x64. On my system, the Windows x64 workaround is the only option that is stable and has acceptable performance with more than a few mods installed. I'm not particularly happy about this, to be honest. I don't like having to use an unsupported hack to get the game running properly, but at the moment it's my best option. OSX and all the Windows x86 options all run out of memory with even a lightly modded game, and have poor FPS to boot, as well as serious graphical glitches in OpenGl. Ubuntu is tolerable, but on my system it's a major pain in the neck to start up in Linux and the FPS is noticeably worse than on Windows. Windows x64 has the best FPS and fewest crashes of all the options, and apart from a few nuisance bugs (I've so far found exactly three that I'm confident are unique to Windows x64) it is by far the most stable. If the price I have to pay for a playable game (with virtually unlimited mods!) is that I occasionally have to edit and recompile a few dlls to remove 64-bit restrictions, so be it; the gameplay improvement is worth the investment of time and effort a hundred times over. It's worth adding that "unsupported" doesn't mean the same as "unstable." In spite of its reputation, so far I haven't heard a single report of serious instability (beyond a few minor known issues) in KSP 1.0+ on Windows x64, and I have heard a lot of reports of it working very smoothly. The evidence I've seen (admittedly limited) suggests that, for some reason, at least on some systems, Windows x64 KSP is much more usable now than it was pre-1.0. Still, as I said before I severely dislike having to use an unsupported hack, no matter how well it works. Although it has no game-breaking issues (at least on my system) it does have several nuisance issues, several of which are, well, pretty serious nuisances. I would very much like to see either an officially-supported Windows x64 build or some kind of solution to make x86 more usable, and if such a solution comes along I'll absolutely give it a try.

I sincerely hope that either a.) this is a bad joke or b.) Squad knows something I don't about PS4. I've got no problem with consoles in principle, but I've never seen a game so ill-suited to them as KSP. That said, in my mind the problems boil down to only three issues: controllers, performance, and mods. Each by itself seems insurmountable from where I'm sitting, but then again I'm not one of the devs and they surely know things I don't. If they can solve all three (and it has to be all three, since each alone is a potential deal-breaker) then I think it could work out for the best. Personally, I can't picture trying to build a complicated mult-part ship in stock KSP, at 10 FPS, with a console controller. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.

I disagree: in my experience, if a "pillar" rocket gets much taller than three or four Jumbo tanks, especially with a long payload in a fairing on top of it, it wobbles like crazy, especially with SAS/SmartA.S.S./MechJeb autopilot trying to fly it. Reducing gimbal authority helps, but often not nearly enough. Personally, I don't mind having to add the odd strut here and there to radial boosters and Space Shuttle-type configurations (where struts are used, sparingly, in real life) but the current state of things is pretty silly. I sincerely hope there's some technical reason why this is still the case and it isn't being left this way because the devs think it's cute or "so Kerbal." Glitches and unfinished functionality bother me a lot less than lousy game design.

Agreed, that's been driving me crazy since I bought the game. The problem is, before they've transmitted any data you can right-click to extend or retract them, but that option vanishes after the first time they transmit! And since they auto-retract after transmission, they're then permanently stuck in the retracted position (except when transmitting again). It's not a huge issue, mostly cosmetic, but extremely annoying. And it's not a mod causing it, it still behaves so even in a 100% stock install.

Got back to career mode after a few days messing around in sandbox. Deployed a satellite. Launched the first module of a Duna expedition. Tested out a new research jet. Orbited Moho.

From 1.0 changelog: He's in there somewhere. I haven't seen him myself though.

Although I disagree with you on the sci-fi stuff (we have several great mods for that, some of which I use, but I don't think it should be stock), I agree absolutely about taking things too far in a "realism-at-all-costs" direction. I like the scale-model solar system, the simplified mechanics, the crazy engineering. That stuff is why I've played Orbiter for about two days and KSP for many months. But creativity and realism aren't mutually exclusive; we can have all kinds of fun with realistic parts and physics. I think it would be a shame if KSP were reduced to an excercise in stacking the correct combination of payload-->fairing-->tank-->engine-->decoupler-->tank-->engine-->radial decouplers-->boosters-->launch clamps-->done, which it sometimes feels like, especially in career mode. I don't think it is that way though, not in 0.90 and not in 1.0.2. Look through some of the stuff in the Spacecraft Exchange section or the What Did You Do In KSP Today thread, some of it is really clever! Some of the SSTOs in the (recently-unsticked, unfortunately) SSTO showcase thread are seriously "mad" and still work fine. You yourself built a very nifty Dyna-soar replica and a 50's-style rocketship in 1.0.2, if I recall. I've had some fun with torus stations and mini-shuttles and SSTOs that I never did in 0.90. All this even with the added "realism" of 1.0.2 aero and balance. And if that's not enough, look at some of the stuff that's gotten built in real life! A lot of it is standard-issue stage-stage-payload stuff, but look at the Space Shuttle or the Apollo spacecraft. Those were creative pieces of engineering. Look at SpaceShips One and Two, even if they didn't work out in the end they were pretty creative. Look at the stratospheric parachute jumps--all the crazy airbags and skycranes and things we've been using to drop stuff onto Mars--the Deep Impact mission, also known as "let's crash a spaceship into a comet and see what happens!"--SpaceX trying to land its rockets vertically like something out of a Heinlein novel--the list goes on. And those were all done on hard career mode, no reverts, with all the realism mods installed.

I wish I'd thought of this. Although I also kind of like the idea that it's the equivalent of "Jebediah-san." I can't decide! I really like this idea and will definitely be using that mod on a future save game. Especially if I ever go for RSS. A possible middle ground for a Russian-style save would be to have all the names derived from "Kerman," so you'd have cosmonauts (I refuse to spell it with a "K") called Kermov, Kermanov, Kermanin, Kermansky, Kermanova, etc. I think I even used "Kermanova" as the last name of a cosmonaut in a loosely KSP-inspired story I wrote for English class last semester. Until it actually says that in-game somewhere, it's just somebody's opinion (even if that somebody is Harvester) and no more correct than any other interpretation. As a sci-fi fan, I really don't like the notion of "whatever the creator says is gospel truth, anything else is blasphemy." When I write stuff myself, I love seeing other people come up with alternate explanations I hadn't thought of.

I think playing Kerbal Space Program is cheating. When I was your age*, I had to actually light stuff on fire and build real rockets to indulge in my space-related fantasies. On topic, personally I use both KER and MJ. I have less than no patience for playing without autopilot so MJ is a must, but I like KER's HUD functionality slightly better than MJ's windows. As far as I can tell they give you most of the same information. Regarding the OP's second question which I haven't seen answered yet, contract packs require the Contract Configurator mod. Install that first and you'll have a folder called something like "Contract Packs;" that's where you install the packs. Hope this helps! *figuratvely speaking

I enjoy the videos, but I have to agree the 1.0 one was in pretty bad taste (along with the Gus Grissom joke). I don't know, maybe I've just seen the Challenger footage one time too many, but even when something like that happens to me in actual gameplay, it just makes me a little queasy in a way other spectacular failures don't. Maybe they should've ended it with Gene hitting a big "Revert Flight" button in Mission Control.

All of those things are either unrelated to the point of KSP and therefore fair game to be handwaved in the name of gameplay or simplicity, or in need of fixing along with the ion engines. I never said the ions were the only OP thing that needed fixing, did I? KSP is about the engineering of space exploration, not ground-based logistics. Same reason the contract system is simplistic and there's no political wrangling. Those of us who want logistics too (like me!) can install KCT. It's also not about astrophysics. Planets on rails are a pretty good approximation of real life, and why should the sun's SoI be finite until we have another star system to visit? It's a computer program in development. This is a concession, not to reality but to real life. (Be fair, this shouldn't still be happening now that it's labeled 1.0, but that's a different argument.) We don't have hardware anywhere near large enough to mine on a scale that would deplete planetary resources. We've got single drills, not strip mines! And the one type of body small enough for a single drill to deplete its resources--asteroids--does have depletable resources. I agree, reaction wheels could do with a nerf. I have to agree here as well, I would like to see some kind of stock life support. It's not the creating fuel from rocks that I disagree with, it's that ore and fuel are equivalent weight! You can refine 100t of ore into 100t of fuel! That doesn't make any kind of sense at all, and is right up there with OP ion engines on my personal list of things that need nerfing. Even if we keep it at an unrealisticaly high rate, at least make the ratio more like 2:1 as a token concession to reality! Also agreed, I personally never use the claw that way and don't think it should be possible. We really could do with something like KIS in stock. That logic is correct, for mods. Not for the stock game. Giving the Kerbals assault rifles so they can shoot each other would be interesting. Warp drive sounds fun too. Aliens, those would be interesting. Lightsabers are all kinds of fun. Should Squad implement those things too? Or should they be left to modders, because, although interesting, they have nothing to do with what KSP is about: space exploration? Just because it would be fun or interesting doesn't mean it should be in stock KSP. And just because it's already in stock KSP doesn't mean it's not overpowered and in need of a nerf.

I voted "meh." Blowing stuff up is all well and good (must try out BDArmory one of these days, it looks like a lot of fun) but I wish I could have humans to do it with instead of Kerbals. I'm used to humans blowing each other up in video games (although it does sometimes bother me if it's not handled in an appropriately grown-up fashion, which is why I haven't bought GTA V yet), but somehow seeing anything "adult" mixed in with the childish, cartoony little Kerbals just doesn't quite feel right. I don't know, maybe I'd feel better if I just retextured them to have pink/brown skin instead of green. I'd actually like to see a "human Kerbal" mod for other, less explodey reasons too (RSS reasons, to be precise), and I've given some thought to how it could be accomplished beyond simple retextures, but that's a topic for another time.

As much as I like Clarke, that just means that where a fantasy writer handwaves a story mechanic by saying "it's magic," a sci-fi writer can do the same by saying "it's advanced technology." The logic is, if a computer would be as good as magic to a cave man, so futuristic or alien technology would be as good as magic to us. It doesn't apply to something like KSP, which sticks to present-day or near-future technology--technology that is decidedly un-magical to someone who understands the engineering behind it. In my mind there's three levels of science-fictional technology. One is technology is known to be possible, the next is technology not definitively proven to be impossible, and the last is technology that is impossible as we currently understand it. Some (be honest, most) science fiction uses all three, some uses only the first two, but KSP as it stands now uses only the first: technology that has either already been used (most of it), or is within one technological generation of being used (Rapiers, NTRs, etc.). As soon as we start allowing "indistinguishable from magic" sci-fi handwaving, we might as well add in warp drives, anti-gravity, and teleportation to go along with our high-thrust ion engines. One thing I like about KSP is using things for other than their intended purpose. If an ion lander is possible within the rules of the stock game, we should build it even if that's not what the ion engines were meant to do. But I won't shed any tears to see it get "broken" in the name of realism, because in real life, using an ion engine to land on anything bigger than a very, very small asteroid is--if not impossible--at least not known to be possible. As far as the actual engine goes--would reducing its unladen TWR help? Reduce its thrust a bit, and/or make it a little heavier. Maybe increase its Isp a little to make up for it. Not a dramatic change, but just enough to make a TWR > 1 impossible anywhere except perhaps Gilly, Bop, or Pol.

I've noticed this as well, maximum number varies slightly for me (possibly based on rep?) but I've definitely never had more than 15. The debug menu can be used to spawn new specific contracts (I frequently use it to get the "Explore Minmus" one, which absolutely refuses to show up on its own) but unfortunately I don't believe there's a way to use it to just spawn a random contract. I suppose it's not a problem if you only ever do one mission at a time, but I'd love to see a mod/cheat/config edit/whatever that changes the way this works, or at least raises that upper limit to more like twenty or thirty for those of us who use KCT and KAC and like to multi-task.

Now although I do notice this, it doesn't bother me so much as the annoying convention of using decimal notation for a system that isn't actually decimal, so to anybody used to math but not software development, "zero point ninety" looks like it should be equal to "zero point nine." I know, I know, it's a well-established system and we're stuck with it, and I'm pretty much used to it myself anyway, but I can't help but wish we used a different character there instead of a period (or comma). 1-0-2 or 1|0|2 or 1~0~2 or 1x0x2 or 1+0+2 or something instead of 1.0.2 that looks like it should be the same as 1.02. (Not sure how you'd pronounce them though, hard to beat the convenience of "point.") PS. Or just use a different system altogether, like alternating letters and numbers for aircraft models. 1.0.2 becomes KSP-1A-2. You don't even need the dashes, if you don't want them.

I know exactly what you mean. If I'm honest I'd say I've had to revert more due to my own stupidity than due to glitches, and it's almost always something decoupler-related. Can't even remember how many times I've stacked decouplers and Procedural Fairings bases in the wrong order. Just the other day I had to revert a launch because I had the wrong size docking port. Unfortunately I wasn't using stock ports--which are easily distinguishable--but Tantares APAS ones--which all look kind of the same and are thus easily confused. Hence, reverts. One of these days I'll do a no-reverts career save, maybe that'll teach me to use checklists.

The way I remember it is things orbiting stars get (lower-case, annoyingly) letters and things orbiting planets get Roman numerals. So Earth would be "Sol d" and the Moon, "Earth II." In fact Wikipedia specifically refers to Titan as "Saturn VI." That's what I use when I'm writing sci-fi, anyway. It fits with the naming scheme of extra-solar planets, which are always called something like "HD123456b" (which would be a planet of a star called HD123456) since nobody's bothered giving them proper names yet. Me, I think I pretty much always get "Kerbal" right except for occasionally slipping up and calling them "Kermans" (which I know is technically right, but "Kerbal" is so widely used now it's hard to argue it's not the standard term). On the other hand I occasionally confuse "Kerbol," "Kerbal," and "Kerbin" when referring to the planet Kerbin. I'm usually pretty careful to get them right in forum posts but I slip up all the time in actual conversation. On the other hand I have to say it doesn't bother me when people get it wrong, so long as they're close enough that I at least know what they're on about. I do find the "adding K to every word" thing slightly annoying depending on context, but not enough to complain about it. I am glad it stopped being called "Kearth" though.

Small and straightforward can get you there too. I made it round the Mun in a rover that was basically just a Mk1 inline cockpit and four ruggedized wheels. The key was MechJeb's stability control, which helped it handle the frequent jumps.

I also think this sounds like a fun idea! My reaction to any non-RPG game is invariably "should be more like an RPG" so I'm all for anything that adds RPG elements to KSP. Tried using the "Kerbal Feels" mod that adds inter-kerbal relationships, but it doesn't seem to work well in 1.0. Personally I would be in favor of a "hardcore mode" that DOES have game-changing effects; if you send a ship full of stupid Kerbals there's a very small chance one of them will flip the wrong switch and the whole thing could explode; on the other hand, maybe stupider Kerbals are easier to get along with, and if you send along a ship full of smart ones they might start getting in fights and make science labs and command pods quit working. But maybe badS ones are better leaders, so sending one of those could help mitigate the effects of stupidity.

Opened up my sandbox save, having finally finished my Elcano Challenge circumnavigation (which, admittedly, was very satisfying to complete). Installed mods. Blew stuff up. Went to the Mun. Didn't go to the Mun. Messed with harpoons. Orbited a space station around the Mun. Most importantly, however, wasn't bored!

Here's what I posted in the NFP thread. I tried different tankage/engine combos for a 2.3-ton command module, and here's the result: Tunguska + LH2/OX Jumbo: wet mass 29.3t, dry mass 9.8t, TWR 0.96, 4317 m/s delta-v. Tunguska + LH2/OX NFP tankage: wet mass 31t, dry mass 7.6t (!), TWR 0.90, 5525 m/s delta-v. Hydrogen LV-N + LH2 NFP tankage: wet mass 29.4t, dry mass 8.25t, TWR 0.21, 7152 m/s delta-v. Hydrogen LV-N + LH2 Jumbo tanks: wet mass 29.0t, dry mass 17.3t (!), TWR same, 3950 m/s delta-v. The only times the cryo rocket came anywhere close to the nuke in terms of delta-v was when I either used a stock tank with LH2 for the nuke (much too heavy!) or an NFP tank with LH2/OX for the cryo (a little too light). As long as I stuck with using tanks for roughly their intended purpose (NFP tanks for LH2 only, stock tanks for fuel/oxidizer combinations), things seem pretty balanced, at least for this size of ship. Stock LF/OX engines get high TWR and low delta-v, hydrogen nukes get low TWR and high delta-v, cryo rockets ended up about halfway in-between, which is pretty much (in my non-engineer's mind at least) the way it should be. My only suggestion would be (if this is possible) to disable Interstellar Fuel Switch for the NFP tanks, keep them restricted to LH2-only. EDIT: Just for the sake of argument, here are the values for the same ship with LF/O propulsion. Poodle + LF/O stock tanks: wet mass 27.8t, dry mass 6.6t, TWR 0.92, 4361 m/s delta-v. Skipper + LF/O stock tanks: wet mass 29.1t, dry mass 7.8t, TWR 2.28, 3659 m/s delta-v. Which is interesting because the Poodle option actually compares favorably to the Tunguska option (and is a bit cheaper to boot, for us career-mode people). Presumably the difference is because the Poodle is half the weight of the Tunguska, and really more a cryo equivalent to the Skipper. If I use a Chelyabinsk instead (love the names, by the way), delta-v goes back up to 5171 at cost of an NTR-like TWR of 0.21.

Just to clarify, this isn't quite how the MPL works. The problem is that science and data are not the same thing. Processing science in the lab does not use up the science, it only adds data to the lab. Once the science is processed, it can still be returned or transmitted to Kerbin for science points. In fact it can even be taken to a different station and processed through another lab! The lab will continue processing the data into still more science points in the background, which must be transmitted (not returned!) back to Kerbin. Example: I have a space station in Munar orbit with a landing craft. The lander goes down to the surface, takes a surface sample worth (say) 100 science points and 50 data for the lab, and brings it back to the station. The sample is processed through the lab, which gets 50 units of data. The sample is now transferred (by a Kerbal EVA, Ship Manifest mod, or similar) to a space shuttle and returned to Kerbin for 100 points of science. In the meantime, the lab is now processing its 50 points of data in the background. A few in-game weeks later, I come back to find it's turned that data into another 200 points of science, which are then transmitted back to Kerbin. So from that surface sample I've got a total of 300 points--100 from returning the sample itself, another 200 from the science lab. So if you process science through a lab for the challenge, you would get no additional points for doing so, but you could still return the original science to Kerbin for full points at end of mission. The end result is, while the lab could still benefit your career save, as the rules stand now it would basically be dead weight from the point of view of the challenge, seeing as its only other function is to reset Mystery Goo/Science Jr. experiments, and a scientist Kerbonaut can do this as well. Personally I think this is fine, the MPL is basically a source of virtually unlimited science points, so being able to use it would basically make the whole idea of Jebediah's Level pretty much pointless.

Mission complete.