mrclucks

Xbox and PS games are 60$ new. Computer games go for around that price. Even old computer games(StarCraft for example) still go for about 20$. There is only so long you can play these games before they repeat the same thing over and over. KSP on the other hand has so many permutations, between the number of parts and where and how you place them, the number of different ways you can go from A to B, that its virtually endless. That is also not counting the number of mods that affect gameplay or add parts or information, or even the fact that you will get any and all updates to the game for free. Sure some games might release a patch or two, or even add a dlc for some parts and/or gameplay (usually at cost), but they don't even come close to what you get after your initial 'buy in' of ksp. I'm not saying that KSP is the greatest game ever, or that we get the highest quality game, but KSP is pretty high up there and there are devs working on this game that probably will not see another dime from people who have already bought this game. I am also super picky about what games I play and for how long(I'll try a game but they usually will not stay with me for a few day, a month at most) and this has been THE ONLY game I have played since December. That in of itself should be justification for at least 50 hours of game play at minimum( at 30 bucks for the game it is 60 cents an hour)

Technically, if you're trying to increase your population, its best to have many more females than males (something like 5-1% of males). Reason being is that 1 male can impregnate many females over the 9 month period it takes for a child to be born ( assuming only 1 conception per 30 day month will be 270 in 9 months) so it makes much more sense that since kerbals are a dieing race that females are much more populous than males

Getting 15 k m/s after orbit with LFO for something less than 100 parts but ment to be a science expedition on more than one soi (its only the mun and minmus, but I think 15 k is still respectable)

I'm not sure if it's just my saves(multiple installs) or what, but the astroid day mod always messes with my game. It either runs extremely slowly, makes it super glitchy, or messes with my other mods. I've tested it by isolating mods and they're always negatively effective by the astroid day mod. I havnt tried it by itself, but I believe it shouldn't effect anything else

FYI, you don't need fuel tanks for infinite fuel, just an engine and other parts

Only mod I recommend for beginners is Kerbal Engineer Redux. It'll give you twr and dv as well as a bunch of other useful info. I recommend watching Scott Manley's beginner series as he breaks it down very well

Depending on how long left I on the contract, I would burn from kerbin trying to get an orbit intersecting eve with solar apoapsis as high as possible, then proceed to get a slingshot from eve and exploiting the oberth effect to make the solar orbit even higher. Repeat with other planets and when I'm satisfied with the height of my apoapsis, hopefully higher than eloos orbit, I'd burn retrograde at apoapsis. As for your dv problem, I'd use asparagus staging and get rid of tanks as you use them but only use one high ISP engine. I've built a rocket with +15k total dv in a career mode where I had just unlocked the poodle. It flew like an epileptic fish on crack and had fairly low twr, but it also landed on the mun and minmus.

I don't believe it matters which way you end up orbiting to get captured. Coming in prograde will speed you up relative to solar orbit, but not the body you're orbiting and coming in retro is the reverse. If you are in a retrograde orbit and you enter an atmosphere, you will expirence more drag and heat due to the atmosphere rotating against you at the speed of the planets rotation. On the flip side, when you enter an atmosphere on a prograde orbit, the atmosphere is rotating with you and your relative speed to the atmosphere is your orbital speed minus the planet rotation (its not 100% due to needing some sort of angle to enter an atmosphere)

Congrats! Pretty soon you'll be docking ships left and right and building motherships for interplanetary vacations. There's a ton of resources in the community and YouTube for you to take advantage of. KSP has a pretty steep learning curve and you're bound to continue learning even after you're an expert

Making, flying and landing a +300part cargo ssto. Took me a few months

There's an atomic jet in Atomic Age that just requires an atmosphere. They do have a weight of 8t so it might only be viable on larger spaceplanes

They have the ability to perceive everything within 2.5 kerometers around them so they count the atoms. that's also why high part count crafts are laggy. The kerbals have to perceive them!

after watching Scott Manley's interstellar quest series i was determined to master that mod. i started playing December(his series got me into playing KSP) so the only times ive played vanilla was when 1.0, 1.0.2 and 1.0.4 were released, and that was only so i could find out how they Devs changed it. my must haves for mods are: KER, KAC, Mechjeb(i'm a dirty rotten cheater), all of the near future, KSP interstellar, and after discovering them i also use SpaceY and Atomic age. ive also started using CKAN for all my mods and it so much easier, even tho i still dowload and update my mod list so i can play without internets

im confused. mind showing an example?

there's also an ambient lighting mod which is similar to what you're doing but just brightens the dark side of everything(including your craft) to whatever level you select on the slider

i know you fixed it, but i think you might be able to get it to fly better/faster/stronger if you take off all wings and place a small delta wing, add a small elevator and a small aileron and then position the delta wing so the center of lift is roughly where you have it now. i'm just spit balling so dont take my word, it just seems like it might be better

i always limit my control surfaces. usually they'll be dedicated to one movement, however for large planes when i'm not using the B9 Procedural wings mod i'll combine roll and pitch for some of the control surfaces

i saw both stage recovery and FRMS on that Scott Manley video a while back. FRMS seems like alot more time investment than KSP already is and i just wanna get going with my missions. stage recovery takes a little bit more planning than just vanilla launches but it works in the background. it's always nice when you get a notification that your stage that cost half the launch, has been recovered and most of its cost is refunded to you.

i recommend to just go to the VAB and just start launching stuff to figure it out (its also fun to make explosions). if you're willing to watch a couple hours of videos before you start actually playing then i recommend to watch any tutorial for 1.0.2 and 1.0.4 (you can even go to 1.0 even though its slightly dated), however Scott Manley's videos i think are the best and most entertaining. How i started playing was watching most of Scott Manley's Interstellar Quest video series, but they are from .90 and i think also .23 and it's also many many hours long(100+ episodes at ~40 minutes each). the learning curve to this game is pretty big and you'll never stop learning but once you get into orbit you'll start having alot more fun. i highly recommend using the mod Kerbal Engineer Redux since it will show you ISP(efficiency), delta v(simply put, how much you can change your speed), thrust and mass, as well as a bunch of other useful bits of information

Only times I've been able to go to space and straight down is literally going straight up to less than 100km. All other times you're gonna want a periapsis of at least 20-30km so the upper atmosphere can bleed off speed before you get lower

So I just saw one of the bs Facebook commercial where it was dissing gamers. Now are we actual gamers or not?

I suggest installing KER so you can see your periapsis and apoapsis without needing to go into map mode. Periapsis should be around -150km or higher. If you're making a manuver node while still in the atmosphere then it will most likely be away from apoapsis once you actually reach it

Try time warping and untimewarping quickly. If it continues afterwards then its a structural problem

Besides being very in balanced, your vessel is super long and skinny. You probably have multiple sas modules and they have been known to fight against each other, occasionally being so bad that it rips itself apart

IMHO it takes more skill due to having to time it better and being more precise with your burns and manuver nodes, but is more efficient. Solar orbit rendezvous is much more forgiving as long as you have a bit more time. You also have alot more time to change the orbit it will take (especially if it's a larger astroid and you don't have a high twr). I think that beginners should first do their rendezvous in solar orbit before they try any in a much smaller soi