Stoney3K

Side note perhaps, but I have yet to see a good tutorial on how to do interplanetary gravity assist maneuvers. AFAIK, there are as of yet no mods that allow you to plan a proper gravity assited transfer. Slingshotting from Mun to Minmus orbit is pretty straightforward but not worth the effort because the amount of kick you get from the Mun is marginal.

The most realistic scenario would be, in high-prestige missions (like rescuing a Kerbal on another moon or planet), that the contracting agency gives you an advance payment to construct the launch vessel. If you fail, you're screwed because you would need to repay the advance, with some kind of interest as a penalty (10-15%?), while you would get the remainder of the contract payment if you succeed.

I suspect in the "lost Kerbalnaut" case it's actually more realistic to have proper life support, since that little green guy/girl is not going to stay there forever. Get to him too late, and it means certain death, mission failure. It's not like he's up there in his pod with unlimited air and snacks, just watching TV shows until someone comes over for a taxi service. It's a rescue mission after all.

In other words, enabling time as a limited resource so warping to expire contracts becomes impossible. That would be easier to accomplish by implementing life support features.

I can see your point. I think the most important type of "bogus contract" wee need to prevent are either: Things the player has already done so they offer no game progression (the afore-mentioned "collect science from your already-existing satellite over Duna") and otherwise, contracts that are impossible from a gameplay perspective (Plant a flag on Jool and return alive). For me, part testing contracts can be challenging, science surveys are hit or miss since cruising in a plane across the entire planet (pretty much point the plane in the general direction, hit SAS and do something else for an hour) are not necessarily my idea of 'fun', but survey areas nearby can be really cool. Tourists are just a boring grind. They are too easy right now IMO, since there is no requirement to carry X tourists in a single flight, if you have a mission that involves 4 tourists, you can do 4 separate flights to complete the contract. That would become a lot more challenging if they would need to be carried simultaneously.

That could be prevented by the contextual contract system. If you have a flight in Duna orbit, it would mean "collect science from Duna" contracts would not be offered because, you've already done it. It would get replaced by another celestial body, or, it would be augmented with a "Launch a new vessel" clause. Yes, declining serious contracts would cause a rep hit in real life, however if a company knowningly offers contracts with ridiculous goals, they shouldn't whine if those contracts get rejected. It's just the way of a contractor (you, the space agency) to say "What you are offering is so preposterous that we won't even consider it". Contract rejection should be a mechanism which the user can use to "down-vote" a specific type of contract so any stupid contracts (like landing launch clamps on the sun) would not be offered anymore in the future. That information may even be offered back to Squad so the contract system can be improved, since they can get a good inventory of the "too stupid to do"-contracts that are accidentally generated.

The point is that the decline-and-replace system is a stop-gap measure and it doesn't need to be there in the first place. It's only a result of a lot of unchallenging contracts being offered to the player. Provide us with more interesting contracts and less grindy ones, and the contract system will stop being used as a slot machine, because we don't need to use it as a slot machine anymore. Instilling a penalty for doing so will not remove the need for interesting gameplay.

I stand corrected: I was referring to the RD-108 (used on the Soyuz core), not RD-180. -171 were used on Zenit. The role I was talking about doesn't change though, on Soyuz, the 107's on the boosters are more powerful at sea level where the 108 in the core (or 0120 on Energia) are more powerful at high altitude and vacuum. EDIT: OK, so apparently the issue may not be the Vector that is overpowered, but the boosters that are hilariously underpowered compared to the Vector and typical Shuttle weights. The first image shows the STS with a typical dummy payload of 27t and nothing but stock parts. The ET is scaled correctly and the numbers on Delta-V and weights for the SSME (Vector) add up nicely. But the boosters are totally dwarfed and hardly contribute anything to TWR. Solution: Scale the boosters up by a factor of 1,5 and they match the stack both in terms of size and thrust. I got the test payload into LKO100 without a hitch using this setup (the only mods I used were KER and TweakScale) and it pretty much adds up to a typical launch and mission profile for the STS, the real STS also has a launch TWR in the range of 1,5-1,7, but it has more powerful SRBs with a longer burn time. For Kerbin scale, this setup is pretty accurate. So apparently, we don't need a nerf on the Vector. We just need bigger boosters.

'in flight' means 'inside the atmosphere'. Above the atmosphere it becomes sub-orbital. Any contract that specifies 'in flight' on an airless body (like Mun) is a bug.

This. The sea level thrust of the SSMEs / Vectors should be reduced so the SRBs provide the most thrust at launch, and when you're higher up in the atmosphere, the SSMEs would take over because they are more powerful there. It's similar to the RD-180 engines used on Soyuz and Energia, which have hardly any power at sea level, but give a good kick once the boosters (which are powered by the more powerful, at sea level, RD-171 engines) are jettisoned higher up.

I agree, it doesn't have to be a full-blown shipyard, but at least some way so we don't have to wheel our boats for half a mile just to get to water. It could be as simple as making a small lagoon or a bay in place of the grass next to the runway, so we can roll straight from the runway into the water. It may even be a good alternate runway for water planes.

How did you manage to make Jeb stand on the cabin like that? In all of my underwater EVA adventures, my Kerbals went belly-down in the water the moment they let go of their hatches.

Here's how I think the contract system could be improved: * Low importance contracts should not take a serious (global) rep hit unless you spam the decline button on every single one of them. This way, players can ditch the super-boring grind contracts that only require you to shove tourists around or test parts you've already used a million times. * Conversely, declining high importance contracts (like the first "Orbit Kerbin!") would mean the reputation penalty is doubled or even tripled. This would make the player think twice about declining three-star contracts, even if they may not seem particularly challenging at the time. * Contracts that require a goal that the player has already accomplished (e.g. reaching first orbit, or testing a part that is already unlocked) would expire immediately. * Additionally, each agency or contract category should have its own, local, reputation which would indicate the desirability of that agency to offer a new contract to the player. For example, if you reject all contracts from StrutCo, it would not impact the contracts offered by all other agencies, and if you decline "Test Part" or "Ferry Tourist" objective, it would affect those categories, but not any other. * The probability of a contract of category X and agency Y being offered is ultimately determined by a sum of (Global Reputation * Agency Reputation * Category Reputation), which will reach an equilibrium if the player keeps rejecting contracts they don't want. In the long run, that means that contracts the player does not want will stop showing up, and the contracts the player *does* want get accepted and completed, which means more and more of those contracts will keep showing up, offering more challenge for the player and a more interesting game without having to slot-machine the contract system.

Corrected for inflation, if we would have a per-agency reputation database, I would be more into that. It's like saying to agency X: "Stop sending me those bloody tourists! They're not going to space on our vessels!" which would give the user more influence in *what* contracts are offered in the future. A bad rep on a company that only offers tourist contracts means that company will stop offering contracts. Meanwhile, a good rep on a company means that more challenging contracts will be offered by *that* particular company, but not by another. You would need to earn your reputation on a per-agency basis.

I don't think "avoiding punishment" is a good way of making dull, grinding gameplay more rewarding. IMO, the contracts should be more varied and more science-oriented, with (possibly special) parts that get unlocked for the contract when you need them. For example, you can't do an orbital survey in the "regular" fashion but you may be able to do it on a contract, unlocking the survey scanner when you have accepted a contract that needs it. This would also allow unmanned probes and rockets early on in the game with parts that are valid for a single contract only.

He was undoubtedly trying to push Kerbin closer to the Mun so he could just walk there on EVA.

Are you absolutely certain? How big is the chance of your craft just oscillating around the center forever?

I still think that "carry tourist X on a suborbital flight" or "Test part XYZ that I have already unlocked on some impossible altitude and speed" should be reviewed. They make the career system boring and promote the slot-machine use. Penalizing the user for doing such a thing is not the answer. Squad is now basically annoying the player for the fact that they cannot (yet) generate more interesting contracts.

Call me crazy, but I never expected *this* to stay afloat: All of those ore tanks are full to the brim. So what do I need to make this drop down like a brick?

You could use Abort. I always use RCS for flaps on aircraft that don't have thrusters.

Agreed, we need a limit on the gimbal authority *per axis*, so you can have a massive amount of pitch control in the engine gimbals, but only a tiny bit on pitch or yaw. Making a decent 90 degree roll so the orbiter ends up on its back on the proper heading is now almost impossible. Also, the scale of the Kickbacks and the orange tank is quite off with the amount of power the Vectors have. Using three vectors, you can launch *without* SRBs and still have plenty of TWR to get off the pad. I would say, nerf the Vectors and give us a pair of SRBs that are larger than the Kickbacks. I'd be happy to use the standard 3,75m tanks as external tanks if the SRBs are powerful enough to carry them. And while we're on the subject, modify the Thud so it eats Monopropellant and becomes a decent OMS. Right now you can't make a shuttle replica that is 100% visually accurate (with two SRBs and an ET that is larger than the orbiter).

Too bad you can't weigh down Kerbals on EVA though. They're able to swim under water, but there is no way to make them go down, only up or move horizontally. The moment you stop swimming you will start to float to the surface. For now I'm keeping my Kerbals on a leash (I mean, KAS tether) when they EVA on the ocean floor. It appears so, that also explains why you can't make a proper high-speed dive *into* the water (even with a highly aerodynamic craft) but it's perfectly possible to breach out of the water at 40-50m/s and transition to a stable flight almost instantly.

What's the point of hard mode if you're trying to cheat around it? Sure, the ISRU can be used to print money, but you'll get bored of it easily because it takes all challenge out of the game. Might as well play science career then. The only situation I would use it is if I was in a short-term cash flow emergency, but not as a regular source of income.

Exactly, although the drag model acts more like the 0.90 souposphere than as a drag model like in the air. Essentially water is modeled as very thick atmosphere now. I do find it funny that the most important thing for a lot of people in the 1.0.5 update, is they can finally try and make stuff sink. In a spaceship simulator.

1.0.5 and the medium landing gear *still* doesn't have any wheel steering?