Two

As far as I can tell (from the answers here and personal experience) the problem boils down to two issues: 1. Biome-based science is tedious and breaks the immersion. 2. The alternative - the MPL - is a bad solution for the problem, because it requires nothing but to wait 3-5y to complete the tech tree. Thinking about it, what I would like to see is something like a more exploration-based science, probably involving contracts. So instead of walking to the KSC water tower to invent new rockets, you need to fulfill contracts to unlock new science parts. So for example at first you get contracts like "Test the Terrier engine in flight over Kerbin", and doing that adds science points towards unlocking "Advanced Rocketry". Later you receive contracts like "Atmospheric test on Mun polar biome", which then adds points to unlock various mid-level technologies. And for the later techs you would need to process those data samples in a mobile lab, like "Obtain surface samples from Ike, then process them in a MPL in orbit around Minimus." witch will then add points to unlock for example "Field Science" over time. This would solve several issues in the career mode, especially the tediousness of biome-scanning, and give the MPL a useful meaning, without making it and endless source of science. In addition it would encourage exploration AND returning, would be immersive and give the player a reason to actually venture out into space, beside the usual "because I can!".

It is pretty easy on lower difficulties, but on higher difficulties you run into the issue that to gain more science, you need to explore past Kerbin system. Getting there with a probe is easy and can gain much science in return, but getting there with a Kerbal on board - so a much heavier vehicle - is much more difficult. At some point you would need the science you would get there to get there. And then Kerbals can be lost forever, where a probe is easily replaced by just flying another mission. Putting an advanced probe core on the ship ensures that you get all the maneuver abilities all the time, but if your pilot dies, you need to fly around all planets and land on them to level the new one up again.

Currently using KIS, KER, Simple Science Fix and Stage Recovery.

I found several MechJeb related things in that file: http://pastebin.com/G1h7wyDE

Where would I find that output log? The MechJeb2.log is basically empty. I tried many different ways on ascent AP for over an hour with various rockets from small to big, including all options on and off and even an adjusted ascent curve. MJ couldn't get a single rocket into orbit properly. I was able to fix the over-steering with the AoA setting combined with 'limit to terminal velocity', however in that case MJ always began turning the rocket for AP as low as 40km, then missed the maneuver every single time and crashed into the ground. My guess is that the drag caused by the early turn - which makes you loose >1km AP - caused the ascent path to miss the node, and MJ isn't adjusting to that properly.

... where no Kerbal has gone before. The challenge: fly only manned vehicles. So no satellites, rovers and so on. At least no unmanned ones. If you are so cruel to squeeze a poor Kerbal into a tiny satellite to have him orbit around Mun for the next 20 years, that's perfectly ok. Rules: - All maneuvering done with vehicles must be executed by a Kerbal. That also forbids assisted steering (like 'prograde') if your Kerbal can't do it on his own. - Must play at least on 'moderate' difficulty (or worse if you dare). - Mods are allowed, but no parts that assist in maneuvering of vehicles may be used (probe cores, MechJab, and so on). Exceptions: - Probe cores may be used (solely!) to prevent 'debris' state. - Probes may be used for very short maneuvers, where a manned probe would be completely silly (like attaching parachutes to an asteroid). Maximum range on such maneuvers is 1km, if the probe is further away, it is considered "No longer in command range" and must be terminated/abandoned. Such probes must especially not contain any science equipment. When in doubt, use a manned vehicle. Hard mode: No 'revert flight' or quick-save. Feel free to post pictures of your journey, like: which planets you managed to reach at which science stage, or where Kerbals got lost on the way, or anything else entertaining. =)

So I gave this mod a try today, and if I didn't knew it any better (from all the high praises around here), I would say this is a crap mod. I am not sure if the current version is just buggy or if I do something wrong big time, but half of the features failed to execute either completely or properly. I tried the ascension assist with 5 different rockets, and either MJ just flipped the rocket around then smashed it into the ground at full acceleration (despite all edits I made in that module), or it got into space, missed the node to orbit and waited patiently till the rocked smashed into the ground again. Even after I steered the rocket into orbit manually (simply by auto-hold prograde, then wait, it's not a difficult rocket to fly at all!), MJ refused to adjust orbit and was stuck on "Retracting solar panel", which are not retractable. Also auto-staging just blew through all the stages for no particular reason, shredding away the protective air-shell on top at 2km height. Once I steered the rocket into 80km orbit manually I tried to fly to Mun, using the advanced transfer. Which simply failed to do anything. Something flickered at the bottom of the window, but no node was added or anything else. So I tried the Hohmann-Transfer... which failed as well without any error message. So I used the standard transfer, which actually plotted a suicide curse to smash into the moon. I couldn't find any module to correct that, so I once again manually adjusted to get a 20km periapsis. Circularizing then landing however did work properly, so at least something.

So if I am allowed to mine ore in between this sounds very easy, then I just need a ship capable of doing a SSTO from the most difficult planet.

Yes I think that is the general issue with the MPL: there is no maintenance assigned with it. So all you need to do is to wait, and time has no relevance in the game. I am not sure on which difficulty you play, but scanning a few biomes on Minimus does absolutely not get you even close to filling out the tech tree on normal difficulty.

I just gave that insane difficulty a try from the OP post and I must say it is mostly grinding and no fun. On normal I did like 5-10 "Ferry tourists" missions to get the money for the upgrades, now I have to do 200. Then launch a science mission, aaaaand another 100 "Ferry tourists". Sorry not my favorite way to spend my free time.

Ever since I landed my Mobile Processing Lab (with 2 L2 scientists inside) I have that feeling that science is just flooding in, and all I have to do is to wait for some time to buy everything. And all I did was to crash... um land a MPL on the Mun, grabbed all science I could on the way down and on the place I landed (no moving to other biomes), and the lab produces over 5000 science. So I just have my satellite on solar orbit warp forward like 200 days, empty the MPL, rinse, repeat. And after like 30 minutes of waiting I can unlock all the lower science stages. And if I would have landed another one right next to it, I would have gained 10k science... or a third for 15k total... this feels way overpowered to me.

Aside from the KSC "biome" "exploit" science farming - which is really tedious - you can just send a space probe to orbit Mun or Minimus and have it send the science data back home. That should give you enough science to buy more science gathering tools, which you can then send to other planets. With the right build you can send a sat to Jool, have it gravity-turn around all planets (so without wasting any fuel) and scan each one. That mission took some time (mostly waiting), but gave me over 2000 science total.

Still trying to build a reasonable spaceplane. I got a plane, it can fly into space, but as soon as I add any payload, it either won't reach orbit anymore because it is either too slow or too heavy, or it gets so insanely expensive that it is no longer reasonable.

You would need to have something that can store the science, like a command pod or the landing can. If you have that on a probe, you can transfer the science back home by landing it safely. The benefit of going this way is that you need very little to actually transport the science. Yesterday I actually flew a probe form Minimus back home safely with less than 20L of fuel, and landed without a parachute, because the mass of the probe is so low.

I would love to see some automation tools at high research levels. For example an automated ascend system, a velocity-stabilizer (you basically enter a set velocity and it keeps that).

You can still get lots of friction above 20km, however you need to go really fast to be slowed down noticeably. Most engines won't accelerate you fast enough to break something like 800 m/s at 40km height, but if you for example put the Twin-Boar under some light load at full thrust, it can even cause your equipment to melt on the way up. I personally found it easiest to ascend with ~200-300 m/s velocity, flat enough that when the fuel runs out I just hit about 75km maximum height, so I can switch to a vacuum engine shortly before AP.

Looks like something d / (k*a^2) where a is the altitude and d and k are some yet to be determined values. Which would basically be the (simplified) real world formula for air pressure.

I have not played any previous version, but I feel that the loading times are horribly slow compared to other games, and in many cases especially unnecessary. For example: why do I have to wait several seconds each time I switch from one building to another? My PC could handle to keep all that data in memory easily, yet it seems like it has to throw it all away all the time, then reload it a click later. Some smart caching would for sure decrease loading time significantly for stronger gaming setups.

I don't know the exact sales figures on KSP, but my guess is that it is pretty successful. And if that's correct, it would be very stupid to abandon it.

One simple solution for a quick fix would be to have 3 save files: persistant.sfs - the current save persistant.sfs.2 - the previous save persistant.sfs.3 - the save before the previous one. If the game is saved, the following happens in that order: 1. persistant.sfs.2 is copied to persistant.sfs.3 2. If 1 was successful: persistant.sfs is copied to persistant.sfs.2 3. If 2 was successful: the new (current) persistant.sfs is written to disk. This way a player would not loose more than a few minutes of gameplay if something bad happens.

I would be totally ok if the game would at least just do something simple to check if a part can recovered (complex also, but I read there are technical difficulties?). For example the game could check if the total mass vs the maximum drag of all parachutes combined would be sufficient to get the craft below 7 m/s, and if that is the case, the "debris" is automatically recovered instead of destroyed. I think that would be a good compromise between calculation speed and gameplay value, with a big benefit for career players. Because currently you are basically forced to build a big, heavy, but recoverable mass of a rocket, which is completely unrealistic.

This is actually very easy and I did it by accident a few times already. The trick is to just have a very flat income vector, so most of the velocity will be forward velocity. Then choose a flat area to land and watch the pod roll till it comes to rest. This is very easy to do with the M1 inline cockpit, because it is round and it can take some beating. Otherwise you can wrap the pod into an AE-FF1 shell to make it round.

That actually sounds very reasonable, I never thought about that. Thanks! There is actually even another issue with that: rocket engines drain a lot more fuel than jet engines, so the CoM changes drastically during flight.

If you run some commitments like 60% reputation -> science, those tourist can actually finance your entire space program.

So I had this brilliant idea last night to attach wings to my rocket, so it could gently drift on the available air towards a stable orbit to save some fuel, however I soon had to learn that the game behaves very strange when attaching rocket engines to planes, and I can't seem to figure out whether this is a game bug or actually working as intended. So what I did in the end to test this was to build a plane in the rocket lab, attached standard jet engines and tested it. As expected it was flying close to perfect, had no issues beside the mysterious wobbling effect if you steer (not sure if that is intended either). The next thing I did was to replace just the jet engines with rocket engines, and suddenly the otherwise perfectly balanced plane rotates like crazy instead of actually flying. I tried basically everything to get it stable: more wings, stabilizers, different engines, different thrust settings, but whatever I do: with jet engines the plane flies perfectly, with any kind of rocket engine it rotates and crashes like crazy, and I can't figure out why. Can anyone please enlighten me on this? Edit: Answer from Red Iron Crown 1. Rocket engines use a lot more fuel, so the CoM will change rapidly during flight. 2. Jet engines drain fuel evenly, while rocket engines drain tank by tank. So rocket engines will empty forward tanks first, again changing CoM rapidly during flight.