lugge

As someone postet above, I wouldn't say Trek is fantasy. It' Fictional Science (of course it's no hard scifi). The plot of StarTrek often relies on putting the protagonists in interesting situations which they have to solve and which often raises moral and ethical questions. I would call that "What if....?"-stories. Thats exactly what the great SciFi writers in the 50's and 60's did. When your crew is trapped in a stable time loop, the point of the plot is not to describe how the loop works from a science point-of-view (because that's impossible), it's the behaviour of the crew. How do they act, what do they do with their knowledge of previous iterations? Do they behave as thei wouldn't in normal circumstances because they know their actions have no impact (they can just kiss the girl)? When your crew is confronted with some strange behaviour of your local off-world wacky tribe, the plot is about how to solve the conflict while respecting their culture. This often leads to "downer endings" because the crew has to realize they cannot apply their human moral concepts to them (which is like we should treat other cultures on Earth). When your Transporter Device has a malfunction and you end up with a clone of your crew member, the plot is not about how the transporter works. It's about how to should treat the clone. Which human being is the "real" one? What does this mean to the crew relationship? Which one get's the girl? Thats exactly the questions early science fiction writers adressed. The tech is just the the vehicle which drives the plot. Oh, of course I'm not talking about Voyager. Voyager is just technobabble. ;-)

Maybe the Terminator (and other androids in question) were quick&dirty products. They evolved from 21th-century AIs which were used in cars or military drones and had cameras and radars/laserscanners, able to spot and identify traffics signs, other cars, enemey weddings bases and hideouts. The Terminator body, without the controlling AI, was maybe used in areas were you needed ground troops but were too dangerous for human soldiers. Thus, the bodies were controlled like surrogates. An army operator could control the body with joystick from a save, nice office room. The operator would use monitors to get camera visions and status information. Later, the machines just took the evolved military AI and combined it with the military machine-body, but they were in a hurry and could not afford to specify and create a nice and clean API, thus, they used what they had. Now you have your military AI in a fighting machine body, but the AI controls the body like the former army operators did. Hey, why should machines be better developers than humans? ;-)

Nope, you don't have to. I love them too, but they are Hollywood comic movies after all. They are no science fiction nor did they ever wanted to be science fiction, so, don't judge them like you judge bad scifi.

Hi there, in my latest (hard) career I'm again at this point you all know: I've unlocked the techtree and don't know what to do with all the science. I'm not even in late game, just came back from my first manned Duna mission. Next planned mission is a manned Moho / Eve roundtrip. However, reaching a new distant body does not feel as rewarding as before. Sure, I can go there and plant some flag. However, it was very rewarding to come back from Minmus/Duna with a bunch of new science to spend. Is there some mod which give science or experiments a purpose? Currently, I have no reason to visit new bodys or biomes other then to say "I was here".

Nope, you wont be accepted until you start a hard career. (Just kidding). Most of the forum discussions are about orbital mechanics, ship design, mission profiles, math... For these topics, there is no difference if one plays career or sandbox. However, I started KSP with career (I liked the progression. You can get familiar with each new part. Sandbox was to overwhelming for me back then) and have only been playing career since then. I would advise to every beginner to start with career. In my opinion, career, even a hard one, feels only different at the start. You have to decide where to spend your funds/science points. But after 2 visits to Mun and Minmus (each one with 5 or 6 active contracts), you will not have any issues with funds and science. I'm no in midgame of a hard career and I play with lifesupport, but after my first manned Duna mission I basically can fund whatever I want. There even is no need for reuseable booster stages because each mission pays a lot more than the vehicle costs (if you have 1 or 2 contracts everytime you launch).

Was it ever alive?

I really like the "Show interstage nodes" feature when using stock fairings. However, they are limited in number. Lets say I'm planning a probe mission to Jool, containing 5 probes for inspecting the various moons of Jool. Because the 2.5m fairing only offers such few nodes, I have to stack fairings. The fairing itself can get really high, but that is not useful (except if you have one huge payload). For putting 5 probes into the fairing, I have to use multiple fairings because I run out of nodes. See my screenshot, I have to use 3 fairings. Is this intended or am I doing something wrong?

A real story, with twists and character development would be out of place for KSP. However, I like the idea of some contracts, in the style of the World First contracts, to guide your space programm. There should be resonse why to go to places like Eeloo and Dres. One example can be monoliths or anormalies (negative space wedgies) on various bodies or in space which needs to be analysed or gathered and brought home. This would provide reasons to go to distant bodies. This can even be used to enforce the player to re-visit bodies ("Hey, the monolith on Moho somehow got active since your Eeloo visit, check this!!") or to set up a colony for long-time studies. Also rovers can do useful things ("There's a mysterious dust storm on Duna, it's moving fast, chase it and perform measurements"). In other words, I do not like the idea of a story, but some kind of paper chase game which provides reasons to do things and explore the solar system. At the moment, the WorldFirst guide you as long as you explore the Kerbin system. You are enforced to visit and land on Mun and Minmus, do rendezvous and docking, and so on.

I never understood why Dres is considered boring. Sure it is. But so are Eeloo, Pol, Bop, Ike and some other desolate rocks out there. So why of all things Dres? Adding another boring rock wouldn't solve anything.

In this (and many other) thread a lot of people said why multiplayer is not possible, from a technical point of view. The reasons are mainly technical, such as part count and timewarp. But, can anyone tell me what exactly is the point of multiplayer in a game like KSP is? I still cannot figure it out. What fancy gameplay experience is provided by a multiplayer mode? In which way can or should players interact? I have the feeling, in a multiplayer environment, still every player will run his own space agency, doing his own missions. The fact that players share a common universe does not add anything, they don't interact a lot. When I go to a planet, there is not much more to do than plant a flag (or gather science, if the tree is not yet unlocked). Would there be more to do if another player is already there? To be honest, even in my missions I do not interact a lot with older crafts or space stations from previous missions. The only one thing I can think about is a shared mining operation. But as it is, bases, space stations and mining are only for RPG or rule-of-cool. In most cases, it is easier to just launch a fuel tanker from Kerbin (even in career). So, please tell me anyone: what is the point of multiplayer?

I finally did my first interplanetary mission since installing USI-LS. This mothership has two landers attached, one for Duna, one for Ike. The "service module" with the nukes can be replaced or upgraded for future Moho / Eve missions. I spend weeks for this mission. The hardware was already tested on a Mun/Minmus trip, after that I did a lot of orbital construction for correcting issues using KIS/KAS.

At the moment, I make heavy use of spreadsheets to calculate various things for my KSP career. I have spreadsheets for designing lifter/transport stages (get the cheapest or smallest stage for a given payload and deltav-requirement) or for managing my habitats (I use USI-LS), calculating the required habitation and fertilizer values for a given amount of kerbals and mission duration. I'm also thinking about making a fancy GUI with python and Qt. However, these spreadsheets need a part database. For my deltav-sheet, I needed all data of the available engines and full tanks, so I opened KSP, went to VAB and typewrote all the data into my spreadsheet. Whenever I unlocked a new engine, I added lines to my spreadsheet. You see, this is a lot of work. And anytime a new KSP version is released, I have to check if some values changed. I did this also for the USI-LS parts, which is even more work. So, I started to look into the part files. Sure I can parse these files, using python or something. But, there is ModuleManager which can patch parts during loadtime. And I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Thus, which is the best way to get a database of all installed parts (stock and addons) and even consider ModuleManager? Is there an library/API which would get me the needed information? If so, I guess this cannot be achieved "offline" but must be triggered from within KSP as an addon, due to ModuleManager. Any ideas?

I always thought these are the steps when searching for a mining spot: M700 from polar orbit to analyse the planet narrow band scanner when flying over interesting spots to get better data surface scanner to get even better data Is this OK? From reading this thread, I wonder if one can skip the narrow band scanner part because biomes are huge, thus, biome averages are useless.

Hi folks, shame on me if this was already asked a lot of time, but the thread is going quite huge... I'm in the middle of a career game wtih USI-LS and USI-MKS. I've unlocked the techtree, with the exception of the last tier. What will happen if I install this mod on my ongoing career? Will the life-support parts become locked? Will the mod integrate properly? I did not start any colonization, thus, only life-support parts do matter.

A future DLC , expansion or KSP2.0 should not just add more parts or planets. I would prefer more playability and a big upgrade of career. Adding just more planets would not solve the big problem in late gameplay: Once landed on a distant body, there is just nothing to do. Career should have better progression. On the start, you just have the possibility to launch some sub-orbital probes. Then, after years and tons of launches and experiments, you progress toward a big space agency, finally able to colonize other planets, gather ressources there and build new bases capable of building and launching vessels. It would be perfect if there are some kind of story mode, or missions that guide you on your progress. This would give a feeling of real progression. Each body that you visit, each probe that you send to distant bodies should help you on your way. Harvesting science points should be replaced by unique experiments which help your R&D to develop new parts. I would like some aspects of the "Anno-XXXX" games where you start with a hometown on a island and finally spread across the whole map, with multiple self-sustaining bases (or even better: bases that need to share ressources which can only be gathered on single bodies). This would of course require some MechJeb-like autopilot feature to manage your macro-economy. Until Duna, the current game already has this feeling to me. But then you have unlocked all parts and there is nothing more to to than "get there, plant flag". This is also the point where probes become useless. A lot of this can already be achieved by using KIS/KAS and USI-MKS / USI-LS. But, don't get me wrong, I don't want to drop the biggest aspect of this game: Design and build ships and get them to your target, learning a lot about orbital mechanics on your way. This should always be the point of the game. What I don't want: science fiction parts like FTL and interstellar missions. KSP always was about math and orbital / newton mechanic. We do not know the math about FTL (OK, we have ideas), but even if we would, Genereal theory about relativity is not something everyone can do on his desk.