Hotaru

Ah, in that case maybe it will still be an option. And texture switching shouldn't be an issue (I already have Firespitter.dll for texture switching on Nebula Decals), it's only fuel switching I'm concerned about. I will investigate.

Ah, I forgot about that. I kind of dislike the idea of existing spacecraft inexplicably changing appearance, so maybe I'll just have to save FTP/CCC for my next career. I will investigate at some point though; there may be a way around that.

I believe the tank-refilling thing is a problem common to all fuel-switching mods (I first encountered it with Stock Fuel Switch when I tried to install it in my old 1.0.2 save), although I will definitely investigate. I think if I really wanted to install one, I could edit the save file to fix the fuel levels in a few active vehicles, and just ignore the issue for old ones no longer in use. It's not a prohibitive issue, just an annoying one. PS. Although it's possible that I could remove fuel switch configs for stock tankage. That might prevent it messing with existing vessels, and I could just use the new tanks on new ones.

Good suggestions, I may go for both of those. I do like @NecroBones's color switching options, especially on the large SpaceY tankage. One issue though is Interstellar Fuel Switch, which has the unfortunate side effect of magically refilling all fuel tanks on existing spacecraft when installed mid-game. I may be able to find a workaround for that, however.

It's actually not as bad as it looks, as evidenced by fact that the rocket didn't need tail fins. The Brillig III/Defiance shuttlepod (which does need fins) is actually quite a lot less aerodynamic. Plus the ascent profile I've been using--straight up till 100 m/s, tilt ten or fifteen degrees downrange, then hold prograde the rest of the way--allows me to get away with practically anything, since the rocket spends almost the entire ascent at zero AoA and therefore never gets much of a chance to flip.

Boring stuff: TL;DR: KER. Daring 3 underway. Bravado 5 return from Gilly. Brevity II: anomaly hunting on the Mun. Exploration of Duna. Daring 2: another test flight. Daring 3: mission to nowhere Dres and a new launch vehicle.

Nobody's refusing to understand anything. It's an abstraction to represent increased skill. I get it. I just think it's an overly simplistic abstraction that fails to represent increased skill in a sensible way. And this doesn't have to be a binary right/wrong thing (or a nasty argument in which both sides write off the other as being obstinate for the sake of it). There are plenty of ways in which pilots could be made more useful, a number of which have been suggested in this discussion. Personally I like the improved RCS/reaction wheel option, which is also an abstraction to represent increased skill but which (in my opinion) would have a nicer, more balanced gameplay effect. And as @razark says, as long as pilot skill ISP modifiers were implemented as a penalty rather than a bonus, and could be switched off in difficulty options, I wouldn't be too bothered about it, even if I'd have preferred a different option.

Gains in efficiency of spacecraft come from skill in navigation, not the actual operation of the engine. In fact that's largely true of racing drivers as well; sticking as close as possible to an ideal racing line is one of the most important factors to getting the most out of your car. But in KSP, as in racing games, navigation is something the player is doing, not the kerbals. Trying to abstract it onto a kerbal skill just seems like a hack--no different than if "leveling up" in a racing sim inexplicably gave every car you drive more horsepower. Another way of looking at it: scientist and engineer bonuses make life easier, but there's no mission in the game that requires a level 5 engineer or scientist and simply cannot be done otherwise. If pilots got an engine ISP bonus, you get a situation where a mission on close delta-v margins might be not just slightly trickier or riskier but actually impossible without a level 5 pilot. To my mind, that's not the way it should be--skill bonuses should make missions more convenient, but not determine whether they're possible or impossible.

Personally I don't like the idea of pilot skill increasing engine ISP, even as an abstraction. I could, however, get behind pilots improving RCS ISP and/or reaction wheel torque (as an abstraction of the idea that a better pilot can maneuver the spacecraft more effectively/efficiently). That would be just as easy to implement and make more gameplay sense; it doesn't really enable missions that couldn't be done otherwise, as an engine ISP bonus would, but it does provide a reasonable incentive to send high-level pilots on missions--they would make the spacecraft easier to, you know, pilot. I could also go for auto maneuver node execution, but something tells me autopilot of any kind would be too "un-kerbal" for Squad. Although the whole "keeping silly aspects of the game because it's the 'kerbal' thing to do" attitude came from the old dev team, maybe the new one is a little less attached to it. With 1.2 autostruts, they finally managed to get past noodle rocket syndrome, so maybe such un-kerbal concepts as delta-v readouts and autopilot functions aren't completely out of the question.

I did this back in 0.90, when I was playing for the first time. I'd generally get anywhere from just into Kerbin orbit to exploring the Mun, Minmus, and preliminary probes to other planets before switching to a new mod configuration and starting over. I probably went through a dozen or so career saves without ever really getting very far. For some reason, I stopped doing it with my 1.0.2 career. Maybe it was because that was the first time I went interplanetary with kerbals, but that one sort of "stuck" where previous ones hadn't. I kept playing it through the rest of 1.0.x and 1.1.x, and had to absolutely force myself to find a stopping place so I could start a new career in 1.2. That one is still going, and although I already have some thoughts about the next one, I don't expect to actually start over for quite a while yet.

One option to avoid cluttering up the UI would be to have an "airplane mode" (like we have "docking mode" now) where all the usual SAS options are replaced with horizon-relative ones like you'd have in a plane. I forget if it's been mentioned already, but a "hold vertical" mode (or better yet, a "kill horizontal velocity" mode) would be useful as well, especially for landers and VTOLs. And just in case it isn't already obvious, I support this.

@KAL 9000 Nebula decals. Actually I'm still using the same old 0.25 version of it I've been using since 0.90, which works fine; not sure what is updated about the one on Spacedock other than the bundled dependencies, but whatever. Good to know it's being actively maintained, anyway.

Bravado 6 during its second flyby of Laythe. Bravado 6: exploring the moons of Jool. Duna flotilla: Starbus Elizabeth arrival. Crew rotations and Kerbin system ops. Bravado 5: exploring Gilly. Daring 1: test flight.

Bravado 6 during its initial encounter with Jool. Station Permanence: arrival at Duna. Bravado 6 at Jool.

I suspect this is it: when apoapsis goes over 70 kilometers you go from "flying" to "suborbital." Certainly that fits with the minimum definition of "suborbital" required for things like tourist flights--apoapsis out of atmo, periapsis in atmo (or below ground).

The sixth kerbonaut class with a prototype heavy mobile base. Left to right, back row: Ribnard, Leeuna, Barsen, Tambe, Asene, Jenra. Front row: Gergun, Daphthy, Madette, Gregger. The second Duna flotilla: station Permanence and Starbus Elizabeth. Munar ops. Bravado 3 and 4: return to Kerbin.

-250m isn't the pressure limit, that's the absolute limit even with pressure limits off, and I believe has been so since before pressure limits were implemented. With limits on the limit is the 4000 kPa mark (at least with stock parts), which somewhere just below 1800 meters according to the probe I sent into the Joolian atmosphere the other day. As far as I can tell 4000 kPa is the limit for most/all stock parts.

@DunaRocketeer Not really. Economy isn't much of a priority at the moment; the Space Program has 8.4 million spacebucks in the bank right now and plenty of income both from contracts and from science labs. In my last career save, in 1.0.2, I had fund rewards set much lower, basically to the point that everything had to be as close to fully reusable as possible. (I also used KCT, which meant turnaround time was an issue as well.) Setting up the reusable systems was a fun challenge, but actually using them in practice was pretty tedious. After a while it felt like 90% of my time was spent cycling Aqualungs between Minmus and LKO and babysitting reusable rockets back down to KSC. So I made a conscious decision for this save that my priority would be playability rather than cost-efficiency. That said, I do have some future plans that will involve recovering payloads from orbit, and those will require some sort of reusable vehicle with a payload bay, whether a shuttle, a reusable rocket, or a spaceplane. Boring stuff: TL;DR: Part welding. The crew of Bravado 3 return to Duna orbit aboard LC-2. Roley and Ordrin: more fun with asteroids. Bravado 3 and 4: departures from Duna and Ike. Lucidity 1: probing the atmosphere of Jool. Immutability and Starbus Valerie: a new Kerbin space station and tourism ops.

Resisting the urge to make snide remarks about announcing super-secret things we all already knew about and actually getting a little bit interested in the contest. Question: ...it's not really clear from the wording of that part--is the Kerbal in the figure the customized version (and the image is just an example), or will they all be generic male Kerbals with just a custom flag and name?

Cool, thanks for the answer.

Built a monument out of a magic boulder.

Boring stuff: Finally got tired of babysitting my science labs endlessly and edited the config to increase the science buffer from 500 to 2000. Don't think this will have any gameplay effect other than not having to transmit science as often to keep them running. Bravado 5 in the lowlands of Gilly. Super Aqualung 1: next-generation unkermanned tanker. Kerbin system ops. Bravado 4: finishing up on Ike. Ordrin: asteroid retrieval. Bravado 5 at Gilly.

Personally this feels more like something that should be exposed in config files somewhere rather than in an actual in-game menu, just because I suspect a tiny minority of users would ever actually change those settings. You would, and I probably would, and it'd be great to be able to, but it's good to keep in perspective what the majority of users are likely to need.

Yes to both. (The crews rotate and the data is periodically drained and replenished, so any differences mostly average out.)

The data stored in the lab drains and needs to be replenished for it to keep producing science. Filling it up is easy. Keeping it filled can take some doing. I'm not sure how the whole science in/data/science out relationship works out, but I believe there is a benefit to sending them elsewhere. Certainly in my career save the labs I have in Munar orbit, Minmus orbit, and on the Munar surface are quite a lot more productive than the one in Kerbin orbit. Mind you, a lab anywhere except the surface of Kerbin is pretty OP. I maxed out the tech tree ages ago and thanks to the Patents Licensing strategy, these days labs are my space program's main source of income.