Dilli

Tech Tree complete is usually just a means to an end, once complete I usually try: 1. Visit missing biomes 2. Build long term kerballed missions to planets to do some rovering, flying (if atmosphere) and poking any anomalies 3. Build better / new craft, or continue incrementally updating older ones While picking up the occasional contract

Try pressing CAPS LOCK to enable smaller incremental controls, for most aircraft I have built it is usually the difference between flying them and wrestling a wing gorilla onto a heading. As mentioned above limiting control surfaces to there proper functions also helps. Most SSTO's are designed to go up and down on a fairly flat trajectory with limited control inputs. They may not be the best place to look for normal planes

There is also a pretty useful mod manager which will download, install and update mods: CKAN Mod manager You might also want to make a backup of your game saves, its easy to add mods to existing saves, not so easy removing mods from existing saves

"However, then the contract system started spitting out contracts that either were dumb (testing the Swivel splashed down?) or that I simply didn’t want to do: hauling the flea to 200,000 m altitude, testing the hammer mid-flight, and a ton of observational studies! Chores and not fun objectives."" On normal difficulty these tend to mostly only be required if something went wrong following the achievement missions that drive you to landing on the mun. On normal you don't need to do the grindy contracts once you can achieve orbit. BTW Observational studies are not to bad if you use ICBM with probe pods, pretty fun and challenging mapping the polls with bad tech and eyeballing re-entry, just dont try fly or drive before you get high altitude parts.... so slow otherwise. Starting a new game I tend to rush getting to orbit, followed by orbit the mun (usually two missions, one high and one low flyby for science), then land on the mun and return. Ditto Minus. Now the more interesting contracts will tend to pop up -> plant flag on both bodies, recover science from mun / munis, Rescue stranded fools, launch space stations and satellites, land bases... {Also once you upgrade the mission centre you can just accept good contracts when they pop up and you'll have a long list before long}. Other alternatives might be starting a game with custom difficulty, upping fund rewards. I think the Kerbal Engineer Redux mod included craft cost, which may also work in science career, although its been while since I last used it so may be wrong

Considering when the original announcement that future dlc / expansions would be free I'd say they lived up to it. If nothing else Asteroid Day, is by todays AAA publisher standards a 10 USD dlc . As far as i recall the majority of the items added to the game since 2013 had not been previously promised as the completed product at that stage, although what the completed product would be was also pretty vague and turned out to be moving target depending on how development went. I cant clearly recall what was promised, though I think the revised aerodynamics, more / improved wheels, and bug fixes were (which we got). It seems that the idea to create paid expansions and DLC faded as time went on, and an approach taken to rather expand the game and increase sales of the game as a whole. Guess we will see though as development on the base game seems done or pretty close to done.

It sounds like a AMD bug I have experienced before, basically the card down-clocks either when it shouldn't or doesn't up-clock again when it should; Albeit the card in question had damaged ram, but limped along wounded for years. You can disable AMD power management (down-clocking) using MSI Afterburner to see if its that which is causing the problems; Keep an eye on your temperatures if you do so so though as down-clocking is one of the primarily ways the new AMD cards control temperature and prevent overheating

Only occasionally on liquid boosters stuck to the sides of the rocket with chewing gum (Radial Decoupler). Since upgrading to duct tape (Kerbal Joint Reinforcement), haven't bothered doing so anymore.

I think there are large IPC difference between generations of SOCS, a quick google search suggested the SD810 is 20-50% quicker for same clock speeds. So how well a game can use the additional cores and how much quick the 810 is in that instance will determine whether its better of worse than the SD805 for that particular game. I don't know too much about the different phone SOCs, only bother reading up every few years when need a new phone, so may be wrong about the above. These may help to better answer your question though: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/990 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9518/the-mobile-cpu-corecount-debate/17

IIRC Steam OS is just a modified linux (Debian) OS and it seems you can just enable the access to the desktop to and file system. So installing Mods on it shouldn't be a problem. Steam machines are just prebuild PC's with Steam OS installed (saving on OS costs) and certified to work with Steam OS (you may get a controller with them to) You could build you own PC and install Steam OS if you so wish. Most of the Steam Machines listed don't give the actual stats so hard to recommend one; That said, as mentioned above a normal i5 + 8 GB RAM and Decent GPU will work perfectly (I have used a HD5770, HF5870 and GTX570 - the latter two are ample; AMD 270 onwards or Nvidia GTX 960 onwards would be safe bet current GPUs) . If buying a Steam machine try avoid a mobile / embedded version i5 (There are to many intel suffixs now but I think its the i5-????U and i5-????M that some of the Steam Machines were intending to use)

You can get around the changing heights due to ore load on minus with reaction wheels or if it is massive RCS and/or thrusters due to the low gravity. With reaction wheels, move the two until the docking ports are very close then just rotate the miner with reaction wheels so its docking port lifts up, the magnetic link between the docking ports should engage and, with a bit of reaction wheel input the two miners should dock.

Having tried it briefly a while ago I am back Non-Mechjeb. I like the sense of accomplishment I get wrestling my monstrosities to orbit; and also the enjoyment of launching and flying a thoughtfully designed craft. I also didn't feel like trying to learn the vast array of windows, options and settings.

Kerbal Recruiting/Hiring, Classes, Skills, and Experience 1. Not having to return to KSP to level up; 2. Award some experience for repeat flights to space; 3. Some form of Training. Contracts The initial world record height and distant contracts are great; The same system should be used for all the flyby, explore and return from contracts available. These also represent one of the best ways to control game progression in terms of science and reputation points.

Girders connected end on end and each one rotated to form wide landing legs work well (I normally use 3, first one connect to the structure parallel to the ground, the next rotated 45 degrees to wards the ground, the last rotated to meet the ground perpendicularly). The girders have a fair amount of spring which absorbs a bit of the impact on landing and tend to be more hardy when supporting massive weights.

For graceful try Shift + S (W/S/A/D all should work) + Space to jump backwards off the ladder

I had previously put KSP on my SDD, its now back on my 7200 HDD; I didn't notice any difference between the two. Changing from a old Core 2 to a new i5 + plenty of ram did make a huge difference - loading seems to be more CPU (and probably RAM throughput) dependent If there are a whole lot of those SDDs which are identical you could try grab a few an stick them in a RAID setup; better be good about backups though.

1.0.3/4 fixed the constant crashing on the laptop with its weak IGP I am using when not staying at home (which is 90% of the time) - It is therefore fantastic! Incidentally I like the revised heating, aerodynamics and balance changes more than those of 1.0

The engines are good enough it seems to protect whats above it - fuel tanks, pods, service bays.... However surface mounted items (battery's, antenna, science equipment, ladders, solar panels) seem very vulnerable to re-entry heat. So either put them in a fairing or service bay then you wont have a problem; else use occlusion to keep them save (seems to work but less certain than the other two). Also ensure drag isn't going to flip your craft - air brakes are excellent at keeping you pointed the right way and also for varying drag (and consequently your orbit). They can start to overheat at high speeds when fully deployed (in 1.0.2, no idea how they will manage now). Aerobraking into eve orbit in 1.0.2 had to be done fairly high

They also great for when you end up trying to dock in the shadow of a planet :-)

I'm pretty sure two (or three) boosters have worked to get sub-oribital for a very long time - as long as there has been a career mode IIRC. I think experience has more to do with it than a changing of the game - when the building upgrades first came out 30 parts, 18t and low tech parts were hard (for me) to get into space (bad habit of more boosters from sandbox); on the same version and many restarts later it was easy.

Finally got my Lathe explorer into Lathe orbit with 100 d/v remaining -> this took 2 Lathe aerobrake runs, 1 tylo gravity assist and a Jool aerobrake. Moral of the story is re-entry heat is real and don't enter Jool so you are orbiting the wrong direction even if you do get an encounter with Lathe leaving Kerbin.

"umcookies - so I may be confused - but how do you know which direction you are facing from your example. From the landing Pad at KSC I always press D to go East - yet in your example D will take you North?" Yes - you are correct. I think you are after the rotation of the craft, the direction is straight up. The craft is rotated so that North is on the right, Soth Left, East is Up and West down. "Ahh - thanks Dilli - so even if my navball is straight down vertical with the dot on the centre the line indicates which way I am facing" Your command pod (and probably rocket) would be pointed at the center of the body it is on / around. The level indicator is however rotated according the rotation of the part you are controlling from; that why it can change when you use the "control from here" toggle as other parts my be rotated differently (by default they will all be rotated the same if placed in line and not flipped or rotated when being placed IIRC). For ease of reference lets just say its one command pod (or they all in the same rotation) -> If pointing straight down WASD will still move the rocket down, left, right and up (relative to the level indicator) By moving the level indicator onto the North line until level with the horizon (on the nav ball) your craft will be pointed north, likewise with moving it onto 90 -E, 180 - S or 270 - W. You can use the V on the level indicator to find your rotation.

See http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Navball The level indicator indicates which way you are pointing. For example the on the wiki page the craft is orientated East-north-east. In a rover, if the pod / core is placed inline W is forward, A left, S right and W back (they may be I,J,K,L). W will take you in the direction the level indicator is pointed. For a rocket WASD always represent down, left, right and up (relative to the level indicator). Say you wish to take off east you would look at the level indicator and use WASD to move the level indicator onto 90.

There were reports from people doing long flights of the game crashing; likely due to memory problems. You could try landing, saving, exiting to main menu, then resuming the flight.

Steam may have noticed a missing or broken file (the repair download is indistinguishable from update downloads IIRC correctly) Strange it happened mid-play -> Never know steam to do any updating/repairing to a game while it is running (launched through steam), it will wait until the game is closed. You can turn auto-update off for the game in steam by right clicking it in the game list in your library if you suspect steam is at fault; else I think you can copy the whole folder KSP from Steam\Steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program to else where and run that copy of it

IIRC any control surface can now have its state toggled via action groups (ie deployed and normal)