Stoney3K

With Making History, I'd like to see a few more aviation parts in the same size category as the rest, so: A 1,875m cockpit (preferably with Airbus-style snubby nose for subsonic aircraft), 1,875m turbofan or prop engine, and a new intermediate-size set of wings. And a scaled-up version of the Kickback would be a good idea since the 5 meter tank size finally matches the STS external tank with the Kickback filling the role of the shuttle's SRBs.

It would be great if KSP offered some kind of consistent API to allow modders to make their stuff work, somewhat independent of KSP updates. But that would only benefit the modders and not the players in the long run, so it would probably not be high on Squad's priority list. Also, a consistent API means you need to document it (or even, write the API from the documentation and not the other way round) which would be a very time-consuming task, and implementing such a thing now, in an existing version of KSP would be a huge afterthought which would also imply keeping everything backwards compatible with current mods. I really can't see that happen. Such a thing would be great for a KSP version 2.0 (just as Flight Simulator implemented SimConnect) but probably no earlier.

Yeah, while we're at it, why not allow *any* Kerbal to EVA through a door if you click on the crew hatch, instead of just being able to exit through their own module? It's not like they're glued to their seats and incapable of crawling through corridors on their own. The same on the reverse, when trying to board a module that is full you're now given an error message and you have to try the next door, or guess if one of the modules has empty space. I'd say that if you approach any crew hatch, you're automatically transferred into the first available seat on the craft, no matter where it is. That would also allow airlocks and other modules with a hatch collider but without any crew capacity (like a universal docking port which also has a hatch, just like on real spacecraft)

Now that we have the Delta-V indicators in the stock game that tell us how far we can fly with our engines in each stage, maybe it would be a handy tool to have an indication of center of thrust and center of mass per individual stage. Especially when designing craft that have lopsided loads (e.g. shuttles) the current indication in the editor falls a bit short.

You don't have to be a modeler to make this happen. If you use a welding mod (like UbioZur's Welding Continued) you can weld the engine to a structural fuselage making it take up more space.

OK, I have a really pedantic question here: Is it even possible to have a practical VTOL craft without using the unlimited fuel cheat? From my experience VTOLs guzzle fuel and trying to add more fuel means you need to add more thrust... I've never found them to be practical (at least on Kerbin) for anything except short flights around the KSC and flying to the island runway and back. Also, a good tip: If you use a Panther as a lifting engine, and link the 'Dry/Wet' control to the Stage action group, it allows you to have a lot of control over your lifting thrust (by toggling the Space bar). Jets are good for a certain amount of static thrust but they don't allow quick control of your vertical speed because of their slow spool time.

Externalizing IVA controls would be a great addition, but as you said, it's a time-consuming task because all of the props and instruments are rendered in the IVA view (in 3D) and a separate window is obviously not 3D. So you would need to have a way to define an IVA 'panel' layout which can be viewed in a window, and render all of the props in some kind of 2D representation accordingly. All user interaction (key presses, mouse events) will have to be sent back to their respective places. It would also require drafting up 2D artwork for each of the props so they can be displayed in 2D and look realistic. I mean, I would be all in favor of having some kind of 2D panel like you have in MS Flight Simulator, as the sim builders would really want to toy around with it, but it's a complicated piece of programming.

SQUAD should really consider hiring Nertea as their lead artist.

Supposing you launch from Kerbin, acceleration limiter is your easiest friend here. If you put that at a modest 2g (which is 19m/s2) your engines will throttle back according to how much fuel they burnt during the ascent. Your acceleration will be pretty much constant, and you have more control over your craft as opposed to launching at full blast with a high TWR which will restrict the craft to a trajectory of "straight up" because any steering is ineffective. As an added advantage, launching with an almost constant acceleration means that your time to rendez-vous an existing spacecraft will always be roughly the same, regardless of payload or even craft mass, because the craft trajectory depends on acceleration only.

I think it *does* add to the cinematic suspension of disbelief that users have when they play a video game. "In the movies", a fighter jet always makes an earth-shattering kaboom on the exact moment they break the sound barrier, preferably point blank near the control tower, where the thick glass windows are now reduced to tiny shatters, while the tower's monitors and camera lens are somehow indestructible. Even though that's not necessarily the way it works in the real world, it DOES add to the expectation of the user, giving a very clear audible cue that their craft is now flying faster than the speed of sound. After all, there is no mach meter anywhere in KSP, so you need to guess what the speed of sound under certain atmospheric conditions actually is. Adding a sonic boom will give the user a sense of achievement because it triggers the "Hey, I guess I just went supersonic, cool!" response. And if you want to be consistent with the movie physics which dictate that a sonic boom should sound *exactly* like a ship's cannon fired from 3 miles away (write that down, foley artists), the IVA counterpart should be a muffled "thump" sound which is recognizable but not as loud. That's a recognizable, but still comical way of telling the user of their supersonic adventure without being too obtrusive. Yeah, well, that. If you're already taking the rules of physics not so particularly seriously, then having the movies as a frame of reference may not be a bad idea. I mean, if we want to get realistic and nit-picky about it, the camera should drop to the floor and remain there unless it is attached to the craft by a massive, invisible selfie stick on a turret.

Just be careful when setting it to zero. Any object that does not have a control point gets marked as "debris" when it detaches from a craft, so if you have some kind of dumb payload module which is supposed to be carried by a tug, it gets marked as debris the minute you insert it into orbit and leave it alone (for another tug to pick it up). When you do that and switch vessels, your payload gets deleted.

So if you want to switch seats with someone on a moving train, you're going to open the door and hang down the side of the carriage? It's plausible enough that there is enough space inside a module to temporarily stow a Kerbal if you want to swap seats. After all, how are they going to get to the door if they're in the farmost seat away from it? If Kerbals can magically pass through anything (including fuel tanks, girders and 0,625m adapters) when you transfer crew, then a Kerbal in the target seat shouldn't be in the way. My suggestion: If you want to transfer crew to an already-full module or a full seat, the Kerbal in that seat gets kicked out and moved to the first available seat on the craft. If the craft is completely full, their places will get swapped. Extending this logic will also allow entry or exiting of a craft via a module that is full, when a Kerbal wants to enter, they get moved into the first empty seat that exists. If there is none, "Cannot enter, craft is full" error pops up. Conversely, if a Kerbal wants to EVA but the hatch on the module they are in is obstructed, the nearest unobstructed EVA hatch can be chosen. Right now, the method to do exactly that is transfer to the module with unobstructed hatch, then exit, which seems counterintuitive.

This also means that you can make a craft hold straight and level by putting a probe core (or docking port) on its roof and tracking "SAS Radial Out". The craft will then keep flying wings level, nose forward. Something that has a little more precision or repeatability would actually be nice. I use MechJeb's Smart ASS because I can just enter attitude values numerically and change attitude one axis at a time, so I can keep control of my pitch vector while the heading stays locked, so the craft will get in orbit on the proper inclination. I hardly use any other feature from MechJeb, but the Smart ASS is great because you can follow the same launch profile for every mission, instead of having to guesstimate your attitude from the navball and correct with WASD.

So you pretty much want a Stayputnik that was run over by a truck?

Are your controller Arduinos powered off the 1-Wire? That could be messing things up, because it could send them into brownout detection mode if the message is too long. You could get the power from the motor wires via a voltage regulator and use optocouplers on the Arduino's outputs.

IMO, there should be an added difficulty feature on TweakScale that allows it to be used in career or science mode without becoming too much of an exploit: Only allow certain scale steps up or down once specific science nodes are unlocked. So suppose you don't have the "Heavy Rocketry" tech node yet, you can't cheat your way into building a Skipper or Mainsail by just up-scaling a Swivel. Conversely, unless you have "Precision Propulsion" or "Miniaturization" unlocked, you can't scale down anything or only scale down specific parts, so a shrunk Terrier can't be used as a makeshift Spark engine. The same would go for fuel tanks, another option in that case would be to nerf the part's efficiency to such a point that it becomes impractical to use, so you would be able to scale up a fuel tank, but the fuel inside would not scale up proportionally with the mass (so the bigger the tank, the more dry weight it has). This would still make TweakScale a good tool for building realistic replicas and good-looking craft but it would not be possible to use it to cheat your way into tech that you haven't unlocked yet anymore. Maybe the mechanism can be dependent on the difficulty setting, so in Easy mode there may be no restrictions, but scaling parts only becomes a useful option when there's no other real choice if you play Hard mode.

My idea is that users (and quite possibly other users, not just me) could mix and match from mod groups which go together, instead of just individual mods.

That will export everything you currently have installed (which may vary according to your style of play). That may also cause conflicts with mod dependencies which are not available yet for a new KSP version when it comes out. You could cheat by submitting 'dummy' mods which are nothing but dependencies on other mods, though, but I'm not sure if they will be allowed in the repository. For example, if you want to install everything from Near Future Technologies, or anything that has to do with RSS, you now need to select each mod individually because not everyone may want to have all mods installed.

Feature suggestion: Allow users to make certain pre-sets of mods which they can install in one action. For most installs, I have sets or blocks of mods which I generally install together depending on the game types I play. It would be nice if I could save these sets and select them to install/uninstall them, especially when KSP gets an update.

Do keep in mind that (especially for aircraft), pitch and roll does not have to equal flight path angle (the angle between your horizontal and vertical speed, or the surface prograde vector) That is only the case where zero pitch will cause your aircraft to remain straight and level. If you want to make it more generic, a 'flight path angle hold' feature on SAS would be great. That means that pitch adjusts according to airspeed (pitching down when the craft speeds up, and pitching up when the craft slows down) to maintain the correct vertical speed. I am very much in favor of a feature that can maintain FPA since it is very useful for any mode of surface flight.

I can confirm, a search will return HTTP 500 after waiting for about half a minute. Might be a wonky connection from the search script to the database?

Airbrakes are fine, as well as the use of lifting surfaces as cosmetic panels. As long as the lift of the airfoils is not the thing that keeps the craft airborne. @Torquimedes I commend your screenshots in the May 4th theme but sadly enough, the return trip needs to end at the spot where you started, so you will be 1000 points down. On the other hand, I don't see any excessive part clipping, so you can drop the 250 point penalty, making your total 600 points. I'm still not out of the woods on the emergency chute thing since it can be exploited, but for now, it's fair.

Should be easy enough to implement, I don't know if there are mods that already offer an inline cockpit, but there are no restrictions in the game mechanics as far as I know. Control points can be mounted radially, although you do need to keep in mind that the reference point for the navball may not be in line with your craft's center. Which would make sense, because your pilot's viewpoint is offset as well. Radially attached parts can just clip inside the part they are attached to, so your IVA space would just be modeled like that (with a box around it). If the IVA space should stick out, you'd have a box sticking out the other end.

I believe they are, since there are other addons that do it (MechJeb, Pilot Assistant, Atmosphere Autopilot), they override the stock SAS.

Is it really so much more challenging than an abort system that can ditch a crew pod? In terms of mass and size, it's not that different.