Octa

Sorry for interrupting the current discussion about jet engines, i'm definetly no expert regarding the concepts of reusable transports.... Isn't the maintenance between flights the main factor that makes spaceplanes currently too expensive/inefficent? In KSP, we pay funds for some cheap fuel after the spaceplane landed and it can lift of again, while IRL the space shuttle had to go through maintenance to keep reliable. I have a phrase like "Why would i invest energy to put 50t into orbit when 45 of them would get back to earth anyway?" in my head, most likely heard or read about the space shuttle. I guess this particular point could be solved with progress in fuel effiency or engine development. Then again: why should i put these on a fully reusable spaceplane instead of a "cheap" 1 use rocket? Maybe make some parts of that rocket reusable but not the whole thing.... Are these valid points in this discussion or do i miss some huge aspects? Please enlighten me.

Emmm...which one of these is correct? A node which marks the intersection point of an orbit with the surface of a body A marker that behaves like the target nodes used for docking, but it can be placed on a surface it rotates with the surface could be veritcally offset to mark a point a few meters above the landing spot for safety margin I guess the 1st would be roughly somewhere around the retrograde marker. I don't know how i could use this information from the second one for an instrument only landing, as i mostly eyeball my manual landings. But i'm sure some rocket scientists can come up with a solution.

Before the player takes over control of KSC when starting a new game, the Kerbals messed around for themselves and blewed everything up besides the Space Center. Edit: Ever wondered why the game always starts at Year 1, Day 1? We use BC and AD to number our years. For the Kerbals, the player helping them to get into space with more or less better guidance and skills than they have themselves means a new era of space exploration has begun. Hopefully, proceeding in space exploration doesn't come with extinction from now on.

Then again, there's sandbox mode for messing around and here i enjoy those parts, as they look pretty good on a Mk.3-plane. I guess most jet parts/engines are kinda "useless" in KSP in terms of space related gameplay (normal Rockets and HTOL SSTOs). I have barely seen any spaceplanes in space exchange without rapiers for jet propulsion since the last few updates. You could easily scrap any jets besides the juno and the rapier, because 99% of the problems can be solved with these 2. i don't care if that thing could be powered by 3 whiplashes or an huge juno-array (if that'd be efficient enough to be considered) when playing around with the goliath or planes in general. This engine and planes in general are mostly for aesthetics.

Hopefully almost the same ones as now (60 Mods installed, some larger, some smaller, some "must-haves", some which are very expendable)... I hope some get obsolete because auf the stock enhancements in 1.1. Then i might install some beautification mods like EVE or Scatterer.

If KSP is a space game, No Man's Sky would be a SciFi game in a space setting. I see your point, but well...spaceships behaving like aircraft or maritime ships is a common trope, see star trek or star wars. I can enjoy both, i just imagine that there are futuristic technologies built into the ships that can counter-act kepler mechanics by "brute-force". Works for me. Regarding NMS, i hope they can fill the universe with content to make it worth playing. I just hate how reports on that game always mentions the crazy amount of hundreds of thousands of many quadrizillion worlds i could explore if i could outlive the universe and play 24/7. Remove the ones where world parameters differ by...lets say 1% and this number gets smaller pretty fast. Then the ships. if i play a space/scifi game, i want the feeling of actually controlling a large ship, not a FPS with 6 degrees of freedom and a HUD that coincidentally looks like a cockpit. I dont know about the look and feel of the Ships in NMS yet. Huge questionmarks that will be answered when it's released.

When you start to write down target goals or concepts of campaigns, missions and a list of ships and their specifications required for those missions.

I imagine this is like flat landers who consider their world as an ever expanding 2D-cycle discussing about the edge of that circle as the border of their world, while they're actually living on the surface of an expanding sphere. North pole is the center, the "border" is at the equator....

Maybe a slider to fill/emtpy all fuel tanks at once? Maybe with a list so you can select the resources Slider |--x-------| [ ] Monopropellant [x] Liquid Fuel [x] Oxidizer [ ] Ore [UPDATE] (Button) My thoughts on UI: General: At least, i want the ability to drag informational panels on a 2nd screen. A fully adjustable 2nd screen where you can switch between other views (tracking station, map view, maybe cameras added by mods) would be very, very nice. Ability to toggle the display / snapping function of incative ships and their orbits in map view. Orbits and Ship icons can be visible at mouse-over, but not selectable. This way you can defocus missions/projects that are not of interest at the moment. More sophisticated craft/assembly management that can differ between launch-stages, payloads and multiple launches of the same craft. (A bit meta, though, hard to explain)

Is there any any news if 1.1 will change the craft/ship-management? Sometimes i'd just like to toogle the icon and orbits of inactive crafts so a satellite network does not always show up in map view. Or to put the ships into folders in the tracking station. The more ships are on the fly, the more confusing it gets.

Remembers me of my girlfirend. She's not not very interested in KSP....ok...not interested at all. But when i docked my the of the 12 orange tanks on my fuel station (no RCS on the tank, only on the tug, so it was VERY unbalanced and hard to control), we both sat in front of my monitor and watched the docking. Such an intense moment. So suspense. Much cheer when i finally docked it. "Honey, i docked a few times, now i will dock 12 times in a row and try not to mess up! "Jesus....."

Do you create new savegames for seperate major project/missions? Or do you prefer to do everything in one single savegame so your missions share the same infrastructure and "timeline/story"? Do you run a complete space program in one save or do you run a few space missions per save and have your space program split to several savegames or even KSP instances? A few weeks ago i had to take a break from KSP because....mods. I like stuff like Planetary Base System, ScanSat or Station/Orbital Science because it gives KSP much more content regarding exploration, science and mission management. Maybe i'll try life support so bases need means to re-supply or to have ships for long missions actually differ more from the ones for short flights apart from the amount of deltaV... I also like some logical progress while i play...no kerballed flights to Mun, Minmus or Duna until i had some scouting missions in forms of satellites or probe landers. My Kerbals don't like beeing sent into completely unknown realms, you know. Communication is also an issue. Once in a while, my ships should be able to communicate back to KSC, so i set up communication networks with the required or affordable coverage. Never actually tried RemoteTech, because most of that is just roleplaying for myself and i don't want mission failures because of actual communication loss or signal delay. 2 aspects of my playstyle....not really dangerous for themselves, but now combine these 2. Result: My itch to have communication networks, GPS-Networks, multiple satellite probes and interplanetary missions/bases at once with a rather grown library of mods finally exceeded the magical 32Bit memory border of KSP. Plus: A Mess. More specific in map view and in the tracking station. I took a break from KSP until a few days ago, knowing that 64Bit-Support will fix most of the issues i have. Now i just mess around in KSP with reduced texture quality, with that i can at least launch and revert a few flights, although it looks not that good than it used to. BDArmory and Mk4-parts are fun to play around with btw. How do you get around this, if you even have these problems?

- hinges for payload bays - Mk3 Inline docking adapter - 3 Man lander can - Crew cabins for rockets (the hitchiker looks more like a station part) Assuming that larger rockets / rendouvous missions need at least 2 kerbals to operate (pilot + engineer for a bit roleplaying) there are no nice-looking ways for me to deliver a crew to a space station or to get some kerbals from space down to kerbin with a rocket.

That's exactly how i'd do it. Ideally, i have sub-assemblies for several weight/size-classes of payload, which are designed to bring the payload in a 100km orbit and have just enough fuel left for de-orbiting the launch stage. Or the final orbit is like 100x65km, so the payload just needs a few m/s to stay in space. I have not yet taken time to actually design such launchers, because i still have to think about some basic ideas before i start, but after the "proof-of-concept" is tested manually, i switch to automation tools like mechjeb or more recently gravity turn. My thought: I can bring 10t satellites into space. I know i can do it. I don't need to proof that to myself 100x times when setting up a satellite network. In space, i do 95% of the stuff manually, But for landing and launches, i switch to automation as soon as it gets "routine"...

Dual monitor support.

Stock could need better indicators for docking, but no auto-dock feature. With about 0m/s relative velocity within 10m range, is there still a chance to screw up the docking massively after you got this far? Stock docking is fairly "simple" with some practice and experience since it's part of the early learning stage....

I ran out of memory, because installed too many part mods....i still suspect RAM usage jumped the 32Bit-Fence after i installed Kerbal Planetary Base System. Longer flights were no longer possible, so i quit KSP a few months ago and planned to came back after 1.1 and the majority of my mods were updated. Last weekend, i browsed CKAN and found a total of about 60 mods that looked too interesting. Found that reduced texture resolution looks rather ugly, but solved the RAM problem well enough to test out the mods. So right now i'm messing around with BDArmory, BoxSats, Figaro GPS, Mk. IV-Parts, Mk. 2 Expansions and so on until 1.1 is out. After 1.1 is out, i plan to start a new space program. And i hope the new version will assist me to actually run a complete "Kerbal Space Program", as right now it's more like "Several Kerbal Space Missions until craft management and map view will start looking messy.

Certainly good for short threads/question, but the longer the thread goes, the worse it gets.

2 years in the forums and now you run off just 3 days after the migration?

9+ My last post in this thread before the upgrade...

[quote name='r4pt0r']2am, its gotta happen soon right?[/QUOTE] I like to mess up time zones, although it should be in 16 minutes. But coming from me, the change could as well started 44 minutes ago or start in 1 hr and 16 minutes. DST....:huh:

[quote name='Sequinox']Anyone got some ideas?[/QUOTE] - Folder structure and categories for contracts: "Part tests", "science", "space program" - Let the player choose his own agenda, like manned mun landing, probe exploration or satellites, encourage a "normal" progress in the players space race (maybe with daily budget like governmental agencies IRL) - Rep penalty for manned landings without exploring the body first with satellites or landers (too risky) - Simulation mode: Gets more accurate the more the body is explored. Parameters like gravity or atmosphere vary less after you returned the fitting experiments - fog of war, it's called dark side of the moon for a reason - mission planning with own goals (Radar/Biome scan -> unmanned landing -> pick landing site -> testing/simulation of manned mission-aspects on kerbin -> actual manned mission)

Is there a visitor center where i can have a look at the launch? ;)

80% of the game need 20% of time to complete, the other 20% need 80% of the time. KSP is almost complete, they just can't make updates anymore which make the community go crazy like "OMG, THIS TOTALLY CHANGES THE GAME AND HOW I PLAY IT!". Finetuning it is, most aspects are fairly complete now.

[quote name='Talavar']You're missing the point here I believe.. I can already attach 70 small solar panels and have the same cost/outcome as upgrading one of them 70 times.. As far as realism goes, Meh... if it was realistic I could slap panels all over it and never have lag... ever... Keep in mind, its a computer game, and we aren't using weather calculating computers.. lol [/QUOTE] I think i do get the point, you have three possibilities (assuming your method is implemented): - add one gigantor (currently, the most efficient solution) - add 70 small panels (same result, but overall less efficient and insane part count) - upgrade solarpanels 70 times (same as before with only one part) i know, it's hard to argue with realism in a game. I guess it's better to ask "is it intuitive?" instead of "is it realistic?". It's not realisitc at all to fly around with little green men. But the overall game mechanic kinda "feels right". And even in KSP, raising the capacity of solar panels or battery density by 100(!)% just by throwing funds at it, is far from intuitive. Yet allone 70000%. Heck, where would humanity be if science really works that way.... The thing with tweakscale: roughly, your panel would get 70x larger, just like tanks, batteries, so why again doing this instead of adding a single large part? Now, for the times where you get out of the spheres which you can handle with one larger part, like you need 10 of the largest batteries, i suggest a welding feature: You select the stack of 10 batteries and weld them together. In career mode, this could double the part count of the welded stack reported in the VAB (so the part limit in the lower levels prevents you from welding all rockets together by default, you get 20/30 parts instead of 10/30 without welding), but in flight, this stack behaves as one inseparable part. Should only work with parts of the same kind, though. Would this improve performance? If i pack 10 parts into one "container" part of the same size and assume the parts in it as static, rigid forces/wobble would only apply for this container part as a whole, not every singly part in it. So there'd be much less physics-calculations right? Edit: TweakScale is a nice mod for those who want it, but somehow i don't want that mechanic in stock, as it's too abuseable. When hitting the part count limit, one could just scale up one tank instead of using 2 tanks. This takes out a bit of the design challenge (Lame gamplaywise, but anyway good for those whose PCs are not that fast so every part less is better. I also don't like the current fuel tank situation (why do adapters have LF/O only, while tanks are available as LF/O, LF or Monopropellant?). But i hope there's a better solution than tweakscales or simply "You decide what goes in there". I like the simplicity of KSP: "Here's the parts, do what you want with them". I also hate the simplicity of KSP: "Darn, are there no big LF-Tanks for my nuke?"