StahnAileron

I think the reason this happens is because, as far as I know, Kerbals don't have built-in reaction wheel to rotate them. If a kerbal starts tumbling, nothing can prevent that other than RCS. I would think most players don't want to deal with an uncontrollable Kerbal tumbling in zero-gravity just because the player would like to conserve some EVA propellant. I'd personally would want my Kerbals in full, stable control. The idea of a kerbal in a perpetual drift-spin or manually having to counter rotations sounds like a nightmare.

Signal strength should just be display in effective bandwidth (mit/s or whatever unit it is that KSP uses), IMHO. I don't really care how strong the signal is in terms of a power rating, I care about how strong it is in terms of how fast I could transmit data. Besides, 5mW between points A & B might not be the same as 5mW between points C & D because of antennae designs. (If you drill down to that much detail, at any rate.) Actually, I do kinda wish the science reports had a time & power estimate when transmitting science so I'd have an idea of when is a good idea to send it back.

LoL. To a degree, I suppose. I don't particularly like the stock gears (bulky and kinda ugly), but I have to use them while I wait for an update to Adjustable Landing Gear (which is probably a bit far off, considering the mod workload the new caretaker has.) I've only used the smaller gears on relatively light vessels, so it hasn't been a horrible experience yet. Though I do find the default settings on the low side. I usually have to crank the sliders up to get handling I'm comfortable with. Otherwise, no issues with the wheels and interaction with the runways yet. I'm only on the T2 runway at this point as well, so I can't comment on the T3 runway yet. (I haven't started a sandbox game yet.) I do wish there were more landing gear mods. ALG was sorta the be-all, end-all landing gear mod, I supposed, hence the dearth of landing gears. (Though landing legs don't have that problem...)

The Level 1 Runway is just dirt and meant to be bumpy. For the Level 3 runway at least, there were several consolidated reports made to the bug tracker during pre-release about misaligned model segments. (I submitted one of those reports.) The devs apparently wanted to focus on other things. Personally, it's a little annoying from an OCD viewpoint, but it's not really game-breaking unless you build vessels that tend to go nuts on you at the slightest provocation. The runway is perfectly aligned on a ninety-degree heading. What it isn't is placed on the zero-degree latitude (a.k.a. the equator). That position is where the Launchpad is placed. If you want a perfectly aligned zero-degree inclination runway, it'd have to intersect the Launchpad some how. Personally, I don't think anyone wants a runway inline with their Launchpad. (Or maybe they do; easier to set up "accidents"...) I do kinda wish KSC had a secondary launch runway at like 350 degrees for polar orbit runway launches. If you're talking about in-flight alignment during/after take-off, you need better yaw stability, wheel traction/friction, or (tuned) SAS capacity due to how physics works. As noted, it could be a vessel drift problem after loading.

Dunno if it's been changed in 1.2, but if I recall, KSP uses approximated number while under warp to speed up calculations. I recall seeing a video (I think by Danny) testing collision detection under warp (granted, this was under accelerated warp, so at most 4x). Visual cues didn't match up with actual events (i.e. things blowing up with meters worth of offsets.) I'm guessing something similar happened here. Did you happen to pass close to anything, like skimming over a plateau? I don't recall this ever happening to me, but I tend to not use time acceleration too much close to bodies. (And when I do, it's usually in quick spurts.)

I remember using the Hyperblast a couple times in 1.0.5 just to see. I used it in conjunction with OPT's Turbo-Ramjet. I used it extensively, so I knew how it handled. (It topped off at around ~2200m/s @ ~35km alt. It chokes above its upper speed limit.) Getting to Scramjet speed wasn't going to be a problem. (OPT's engine ramps up horribly fast once you hit Mach 1.5 or so...) Holy crap was I going fast: I broke 3000m/s. I had to keep pretty aggressive down pitch to not fly off the planet. (I think one run I did with 2 Hypers had me at SOI escape velocity... Or pretty damn close to it.) I was laughing in amazement during those runs. Trying not to burn up was the hardest part. (I did have RealHeat installed though.)

@Prisma You quoted the thread title; did you even read the actual OP? (Or any other post in this thread, for that matter...) You immediately dug into the PHYSICAL meanings of the title, rather than the GAMEPLAY mechanics the OP is actually talking about. The OP is taking about the amount of time it takes to transmit a given amount of science for a given connection quality ("Transmit Time") vs. the current system where you lose science based on the connection quality ("Signal quality"). The argument is that the amount of science you return should NOT be penalized because of the signal quality, but that it should just take more time to transmit. (e.g. Instead of 5 seconds at 100% quality, it'd take 10 seconds at 50% quality.) So you first topic of discussion (quality) is a tangent and your second (signal delay) has no bearing on the topic at hand. (That being, "What penalties a player should have for a poor connection in regards to transmitting science.")

I think the hardest (or most tedious...?) part of docking is engineering the vessel to be easy enough to dock. Of course, there's also the conditions under which you need to dock (e.g. in daylight vs. at night with no lights or multi-port docking vs. single port.) Though having assists like DPAI or KURS makes the actual docking fairly simple(r). I haven't docked much in my KSP playing, but when I do, I can spend quite a bit of time getting my RCS set-up as relatively balanced as I can (within SAS/RW tolerance so I don't veer off oddly during translation.) So for me, I'd say 9 difficulty in stock. With basic mods, like a 5/6. With extensive mods (JUST short of full automation via something like MJ), it's like a 2. All assuming I'm actually in a craft designed to be docked. (With one port.) Anecdote: I once did a docking with both craft having NO RCS at all. (This was a very basic Apollo-style system to test out the new fairings in 1.2pre.) It took a while because of a stupid complication: the stack separator got caught between the ports on docking. I had simply flipped the Command Module around and retro'ed a little. My attempt to whack the separator away didn't work. I spent minutes trying to separate the crafts (LOTS of spinning there...). Then I had to re-approach and re-align them properly. (Again, no RCS, so all via main engine burns.) My most complicated docking to date. (I've yet to attempt multi-port docking.)

I wasn't implying that at all. I meant just using Trajectories' atmo math to help calculate that last minute (suicide) burn for landing on atmospheric bodies like it tries to do on vacuum bodies. I recall someone asked for that capability and you stating atmo effects complicating the matter. I figure something like Trajectories, which does the atmo calculations, could help. I wasn't talking along the lines of making a combination Trajectories/BBT-style mod (at least in terms of what a user sees). Wouldn't Trajectories' math help you figure out WHEN that last 1-2 minutes prior to impact landing starts in an atmosphere? (<<< This is my main point if I wasn't clear enough before...) Sidenote: Actually... I think the Landertron Mod has some "when do I burn?" code to activate its retro rockets at the right moment. Dunno if it'd help you.

In-game though? I know a lot of things got abstracted and given somewhat arbitrary numbers... I guess it would be easiest (and makes sense) to use the actual units uses in calculations. The fact volume in-game isn't listed as an actual unit is what makes me doubt and wonder sometimes. (I don't think any liquid fuels or oxidizers have a density of 4kg/l.) I understand though, since densities are rarely nice, simple integer numbers. Then again, the vast majority of numbers involved in rocket science aren't integers, either. (Maybe that's something I would like: an option use and display actual units in-game, kinda like the option to show/use Kerbin vs. Earth days.)

I can't comment much on the other parts, but the reaction wheels make sense. The total mass of the craft is far more important than the mass of the RW part. In practice, 5 torque (does anyone know the actual units this is suppose to be, or is it just an abstract, arbitrary value?) is A LOT for a typical Size 0 vessel. They tend to be small, compact, and fairly light. The probes I've made at Size 0 I actually need to crank DOWN the torque. (Granted, I'm using part mods as well, but many part mods in terms of mass are decently aligned with stock parts.) The Size 0 RW is actually OP in practice, IMHO. Besides, balancing in games don't always follow linear progression. I mean, in real life, there are things like the Square/Cube Law. The same can be said in game balancing. Linear balancing looks great on paper; in practice, it can be whole other beast. (Especially when you are dealing with multiple interaction mechanics.)

I'm not pushing for this (landing manually isn't something I attempt often, anyway), but could you latch into something like the Trajectories mod to help with atmospheric calculations for time to impact? (Or use come of the code?) Though I don't know if it would be worth the trouble since even trajectories doesn't take into account AoA on the fly (AoA predictions is done via slider presets.) By default I think it uses an AoA of zero (always prograde, though I don't recall whether that's atmo or orbital prograde... Yeah, complex, huh?) Still, if you plan on continuing, I figure the math for atmo effect predictions you'd need are sorta served by Trajectories.

If you're like that, then just run KSP in the background, 24/7. I'm not QUITE sure since I have the options off, but I think Unity is fairly smart about GPU usage when KSP is not actively being rendered (i.e. Minimized to taskbar... Though maybe it's the OS managing that.) I've had my GPU wind down when I have KSP minimized for a short while (couple of minutes? However long it take the fan to cool it to reasonable level so it can wind down, it feels like.) Granted, you'd be paying more for power usage, but it'd probably not be all that noticeable (maybe...) And of course you'd be losing compute resources and can't play any other game that needs exclusive GPU access... Still, considering the amount of real-time it takes to do certain tasks (Space = Time and interplanetary distances are immense, even if scaled down), I don't think letting real-time, unattended (offline) progression is all that useful. I'd rather Time-Warp for a few seconds and be done with it than wait 18 real hours for a task to be done. (Or doing something else in-game while I wait, but we're assuming a player doesn't have the time to do that. i.e. Have time to do one mission, not two, in a block of real-time.) I don't think that amount of unattended game progress is worth waiting 18 real hours. I've gotten interrupted playing KSP as well. It could be hours after I Alt-Tab out of / ESC pause it, so I'm glad to be able to continue exactly where I left off rather than coming back to progression I have no account of because I wasn't there to witness it. And not to knock on the idea further, but your proposal now reminds of how many Social Media games work by tying progression to real-time elapse. (e.g. Farmville and waiting 18 hours for planted potatoes to growth before harvesting.) I know people have their own play styles and all, but I've always hated real-time elapse style progress... Well, in games that didn't have in-game time acceleration. I think too much can happen in KSP for unattended progress to be a real thing. Anyway... I say if you have a spare computer that can run KSP, set it up as a pure KSP machine and leave KSP running on it all the time. Expensive workaround, but it's either using up some of your own resources or getting someone to volunteer and donate theirs to create your mod for you. Which is cheaper, I dunno.

Right, I kinda forgot to mention the Strategies. I wound up ignoring them in the long run though. (I dunno why, but in my heavily modded 1.0.5 install, the strategies didn't seem to work right. The amount of money I was getting was not reflecting what I should've been getting with 100% Science-to-Money conversion, especially with the science multiplier I was using.) Strategies were one aspect of gameplay that made little sense unless you went in 100% (lower investment conversion rates sucked). So I kinda ignore the Admin Building. I guess with 1.2 I'll have to check and see if Strategies actually work right for me once all the mods I use update. (I had several issues with that install. I never bothered reporting them since I was playing 1.0.5 well past 1.1's release and it was a very heavily modded install. Got lazy with troubleshooting unless it was game-breaking and I had no workaround.) @Streetwind I didn't mean to imply that the reviews were incorrect or that KSP attempts to trick people. It's more that KSP, IMO, lacks gameplay mechanics with longevity and sense . KSP's sim aspects still entrances me. I still find myself coming back now and then to engineer a new vessel just to see if it would work or make sense. It's just whenever I look at it as a game rather than a pure sim that it feels very lacking. (At least in stock, without a lot of gameplay-based mods installed.) Of course, I'm also a little jaded from the brokenness of KSP up until 1.2 (well, so far), but that's something else. I (still) love KSP, just not as a "game" by typical definitions. Just to be an idiot, I'll take partial credit by inspiring him to write that Anyway, guess I (we?) should leave that topic alone now and leave the thread to address the OP's thoughts rather than derailing this anymore.

I think anyone that wants a different (better?) career experience us just clamoring for fundamental changes to the stock career system and gameplay mechanics rather than a mod that attempts to finesse and workaround the current system. Disclosure: I'm one of that ones that believes KSP sucks as a game and needs an overhaul in the career system (progression, mechanics, etc.) Reviews praised the "game" and it got pretty nice scores, but for the reviewers, I think it was first impression shock and awe (I doubt many of them played the game before hand nor played it more than needed to do a review, never mind extensive gameplay testing.) I was entranced by KSP at first, but that feeling fades quickly once you start seeing its inherent limitations and/or get decent at it core attraction (Orbital Mechanics Simulation.) I personally think KSP review score were more, "Holy crap! This is so atypical from the usual!" rather than, "This is truly awesome and great!" I can't blame the reviewers due to time constraints and whatnot. As I usually say, great sim, lousy game.

Personally, I'd rather not have KSP doing things when I'm not there to babysit it considering the weird crap it can pull off sometimes. If I want KSP to be "running" in the background like that, I'd have the game actually running in the background and using that option in the Options menu (you know, the one that lets KSP keep processing even when it's not in focus. For the record, I have that "OFF" so I can look up info if I need to while playing, like calculating orbit AP, PE, and orbital periods for satellites.) I rarely shut-down my system to begin with. And as mentioned, that's what time-warp is for. Real-time progress is much too slow for anything other than tasks that you should be present for anyway (like maneuver nodes, launches, etc.) Something like KAC and time-warp is more than enough. Unless KSP introduces far more automation options AND other mods support such an option, off-line time progress is not something I'd see being supported well, if at all. (I also imagine this would make loading a save game take longer since the plugin would need to recalculate EVERYTHING that happened since save until loading and then apply it.)

Crap... I have a contract for 5 kerbals in-orbit G-LOCing... I either need one ridiculous craft or will have to do this like 5 times with something simpler. This is going to be bigger loss of time than I thought. (I don't like cancelling contracts after I accept them.) I came here hoping someone had luck with the centrifuge method... Oh well, back to the drawing and planning board.

Lots of people like to state something as hyperbole to upsell the thought. It's why I dislike it when people start a suggestion with, "We Need...!" rather than "I think..." or "I would like..." Not many like to take responsibility (and ownership) for their own thoughts, it seems, when it has the chance of being rejected. (... Huh... Seems those group interaction and communication classes I had to take are still with me... Just realized it now.) I've used Size 1 & 2 cargo bays via mods before. They are useful, but not "essential". I'd rather have the devs focus on user-experience/quality-of-life and gameplay mechanics than parts at this point. KSP is half-defined by its mod community. Part mods are abundant. Let them serve an individual's wants while the devs work on actual needs. (Seriously, at this point, if the devs think they need more parts, I think it'd be easier to license parts from existing mods.) When it comes to just parts, I'd rather just ask a modder about their interest in my idea than pester the devs. (Shout out to @SuicidalInsanity, as he's implemented a couple of my ideas. THANKS!)

@K.Yeon First off, welcome back! It's been a while since I've visited this thread (I had been on KSP 1.0.5 for a while, so I'll be jumping to 1.2 once all the major plugin-based mods I use update), so it was a VERY nice surprise to hear you're back on the mod. Your plans for the new release look amazing (that deployment bay is genius!) Looking forward to the new version. Second: With the new mod release (1.9), have you considered doing a release in the Add-on release forum, or do you still think OPT is only a Dev mod? You seem to be pretty demanding of yourself (the 1.7 and 1.8 releases make it feel like you were never quite satisfied by your efforts), but I think even by 1.7 OPT could've been release worthy. (Besides the weirdness that was inherent to the 1.0.x version of KSP...) Just curious because I find it strange that OPT has been technically "in-dev" all this time without an "official" release version, despite its usability. Anyway, again, kinda anxious now. OPT is in my top list for part mods, so it great to hear it being updated for KSP 1.2. I wish you the best of luck and eagerly await your next release!

@IgorZ If you've taken this up, have you considered merging it with: That's a lighting parts mod as well that benefited from the addition of the color plugin from this mod. (I once made a MM.cfg to change ALL lights to this mod's plugin module.) ASET's mod used to have a color change dependency plugin, but that one stagnated (hence why SIL never updated past 0.90). Just a thought for your consideration. I find how BRIGHT SIL parts are to greatly reduce the number of lighting parts I needed on a vessel (part count being an enemy back in the 1.0.x days.)

Huh... You think they'd just integrate fully by now rather than leaving it as an add-on DLC.

Uh, last I recall, I thought the Asteroid Day stuff was integrated into 1.2. I'm pretty sure one of the new antenna parts is in fact the AD antenna.

I imagine it could work, just perhaps not well. There seems to be more part stats and overhauled modules in 1.2 that may need integration (above notes one example: comm links) and/or tweaking (and probably complete overhaul if using the wheels module). I have 1.2 downloaded but haven't touched it yet as I wait for mods to update. (I dread this because I'm coming in from 1.0.5 and several mods I use even back then were abandoned, much less nearly a year later. Some of the bigger ones have been picked up, but the smaller ones I doubt will see updates.) Still, I'm in no real rush to play KSP, so I can wait. (I actually only use a small handful of parts from B9, at least with 1.0.5. I might keep the whole mod this time around since KSP has a much better backend to handle everything now.)

@Tau137@Veeltch: Addressing both at once since nested quotes on reply by default isn't a thing here... Mostly agreeing with Veeltch: As I understand it, Career wasn't even a thing and seems to have been more about pressure from the community. So yes, the KSP devs weren't thinking of career when it was implemented... Because I don't think they were thinking of implementing anything like it at the time (if ever at all...) KSP's original 1.0 release felt very much like a "DON'T CARE; GET IT OUT NOW!" moment considering performance, buggy-ness, etc. It felt like either the devs felt pressure from either the investors to get a product out or from the community. Remember, KSP had been in development for a long time (about 5 years at 1.0 release, I believe?) Someone wanted their money's worth, being it the employers or the consumers... So yeah, career = half-baked idea, to put it kindly. A gameplay mechanic is broken if players regularly use an in-built option to help bypass or mitigate it. Even if a change doesn't make it worse, if it doesn't solve the problem, there's no improvement. No improvement can be just as bad is making it worse (or, uh, worse: at least making something worse is a sign they're willing to make changes. Keeping it the same means they aren't listening, don't care, or think there is no issue. Consumers are a finicky bunch and will view things in ways that'll serve their need first and foremost. Remember, humans are selfish.) So any changes that don't (attempt to) improve the system is a waste of effort. Doesn't matter: if you lower gains, it just makes the grind that much more irritating. It's irritating now, even with a 10x boost, because Science is tied to tech, which limits progression. Regressive Science gains just makes people use the science multiplier more in the long run. We establish this as already broken. Outside reading (and I think I may have posted there already...), so skip. Trying to tweak a broken system is a futile attempt that just leads to misery for everyone. You either revamp the system completely or just toss it out and try something new. You can't make lemons into lemonade if what you started with was a turd. (I thought of using the turd/diamond metaphor, but I think that's been over-used...) More freedom would entail a better system/mechanic, not adjusting the current broken one. And that's it... Probably misconstrued something along the way. If something seems off, let me know.

I had a much longer post going, but it turned into a rant about KSP as a game, so I stopped. Suffice to say I gave up on KSP as a game when it comes to Career mode. I just crank the science multiplier to 10x to get around that (poor) mechanic so I can focus on contracts and my own endeavors. Science in KSP is completely broken and pointless with a fixed solar system every time you play. Astronomy and geo sciences should not drive technological progress (at least not as the scale KSP has it, which is basically 100%). If anything, I'd rather tech research be money-driven and upgrades to that tech being science driven. (Still kinda dumb, but makes more sense than a dirt sample somehow giving you access to aerospace expertise.) Exploration needs variety or it gets stale quick. KSP could use procedurally generated content. (I'm tempted to say it needs it for gameplay longevity, or else the exploration and discovery aspect of KSP loses it's worth, which is where half of the charm of KSP lies. I hate saying a game needs something rather that saying I want it to have something.) Hmm... Longer than I thought, but still shorter than my first attempt.