MaxPeck

I think it would go a long way if Squad could figure out a way to start integrating real-life missions into KSP and thus giving it a point. They kinda did that with Asteroid day... but now real-world spaceflight is on the verge of really ramping up. It would be awesome if Squad could start making more official mods in conjunction with the people doing this - i.e. a mod to replicate spaceX's landings, a mod to replicate some of the ISS stuff going on, various deep-space and planetary missions, etc. I would even almost support the idea of DLC mission packs that are sanctioned by the actual bodies doing to the research. Maybe even start a virtual mission patch collection or something. This would provide an almost endless supply of new mission objectives, as players work to replicate what they see happening in the news, as well as provide more of an engineering/STEM focus to the game that's already kind of there, but very nascent.

Yup, the Vandenberg pad was a USAF project that got scrapped after challenger. Read Mike Mullane's book... he's very open about that what's and how's of how NASA was pimping out the Shuttle program (and seats on it) to anyone who would kick in bucks.

You guys have it all wrong. Microsoft has bought the rights to KSP so they can develop it as part of their Hololens empire, alongside Minecraft. All of the devs have gotten big fat payouts, and they're leaving in small groups so as to not alert the masses that there's been a change in management, lest people flee the game ahead of the takeover by the evil empire. It's all been pre-planned and structured. The devs and staff will leave in ones and twos over the course of the summer, ostensibly for "personal reasons." Once the takeover is complete and Microsoft has it's own people in place, you'll get word that the patcher is finally fixed! And then, once day with you start KSP, you'll get a notice that it's automagically updating, and instead of Squad's logo, you'll see the Four Windowpanes of the Apocalypse. and a brilliant splash screen that informs you that you're now playing MSKSP. People on here telling you that "this happens all the time" in the software industry are actually Microsoft plants who were sent in ahead of time to earn the trust of the community and keep you calm during the transition. Think about it... all of the sudden new hires from the community. The staff exodus, beginning with Dr. Turkey (who clearly facilitated the deal and got the first payout), followed by the game's lead designer (who got a nice big payout, no doubt, since it was his concept)... and now the slow exodus will begin. Maybe that's the big announcement that Squad teased during the "vacation", which was actually a period of forced silence from all employees while Microsoft's legal team did their due diligence, finalized the deal and started cutting checks. Maybe in the next few weeks, you'll come onto the forum to see the big announcement (a la minecraft) that Microsoft has taken over the game, and how great it will be having a big production house pouring resources into development. It all fits. My work here is done. Discuss and enjoy.

Actually, to agree with some of the others, I rather like the idea of creating a "malfunctions and other problems" area. It would give people a place to seek help/vent/ragequit without cluttering up the General forum and invading some folks' safe spaces. You could venture in there if you want to commiserate or try to help, but it could also serve as a DMZ for those who suffer from counter-complaint derangement syndrome. It would also give the devs a way to collect and examine in a macro scale the most obvious and pressing issues users are facing without having them scattered throughout the forum. It may not be as directly helpful as a well written and properly formatted bug report, but if they can go on there and see a trend of complaints about gripe X, it could clue them in that something is amiss for some folks. It would also possibly clean up the endless stream of frustrated posts that seem to accompany every devnote tuesday posting. I think it's a capital idea.

*their I would further estimate that 10% of KSP players1, on or off the forum are left handed. We can do this all day. The bottom line is that the game's broke. If it weren't, we wouldn't be eagerly awaiting 1.1.3 -a patch specifically meant to do nothing but fix bugs- or be talking about the next iteration of U5 since this one's not getting the job done. Squad is doing a heroic job of trying to pull it together and make it stable, but it's not there yet. In the meantime, people are feeling frustrated and voicing those frustrations. This Forum, for better or worse, is a feedback conduit to the game's developers. You may think it's unhelpful for Squad to see criticism on here, but that's customer feedback and it's an important part of a product's lifecycle. You know what's even less helpful? When someone attempts to air their grievances, and they're pounced on by an elitist clique of "my version works fine, you're crazy" community members who see it as their mission in life to squelch complainers. I, personally, think it's time for another rule: 1(k) (or whatever we're up to): do not attempt to silence, shame, or otherwise discourage users from giving product feedback, no matter how "useful" or "unhelpful" you think it is. @sal_vager handled this appropriately, in that he addressed the person's problem, acknowledged it, and said there are fixes on the way. That is all that most angry posters are looking for, is some reassurances *from the actual game makers* that it's all under control. What turns these threads from complaint threads to rage riots is the inevitable stream of self-appointed forum guardians who come into these things, and instead of letting Squad say "we're on it, thanks for taking the time to voice your issue", instead take it upon themselves to put down the "whiners". 1. about 10% of the total population is estimated to be left-handed. see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/left-handed-facts-lefties_n_2005864.html

Something, perhaps, could be gleaned from this fact. Like an unhappy customer base, perhaps? The hardest part of playing KSP anymore isn't learning orbital mechanics or anything silly like that, it's learning to manage expectations. People come into this game with certain expectations, and need to learn to be happy with having paid for a game that kinda works, most of the time for most people (except all the time for a lucky group, and none of the time for an unluckier crew). They also need to learn that any voicing of complaint or criticism, without Bachelor-of-Science-in-Computing quality logs and engineer-level narrative descriptions will not be met with assurances and that silly "customer service" that many have become spoiled by in other parts of the commercial sector, but will instead be met with ridicule by the community they're seeking reassurance from, and then promptly silenced. But hey, don't let any negativity from disaffected customers invade your safe space. It's always cool to throw rocks at the newcomers and the disgruntled. Incidentally, kudos to @sal_vager for coming on here and doing the right thing by this guy - providing assurances and letting him know his voice was heard, and his issue will be addressed.

I get this too... I'm not using RO or RP-0, but I am using RSS. I'm not using Ven's mod. I get the same behavior with science labs suddenly vanishing in flight, usually around 6000m. Also, if you Hyperedit them into orbit, they go flying off at ludicrous speed in a random direction.

So I managed to intercept an asteroid, but when I got close to it, there was no texture, it was just black. After a few clumsy attempts, I managed to snag it with the claw, at which point my ship started - and this is the only word I can really describe this with - vibrating. I managed to swing the asteroid into a 200X200. I de-orbited my intercept ship and sent up a mining ship to start cooking up some rocket fuel, and after capturing the black blob with the claw again, I couldn't do anything. My ship showed as "landed", but I couldn't go back to the tracking station because the game insisted my ship was moving across terrain. I'm not really sure where to go with this. As you'll see in the log below, I'm playing with a couple of mods, including texture replacer and RSS. Not sure if that makes a difference, but at this point I have this black mass orbiting above Earth with no way to do anything with it. Any ideas? EDIT: I tried to upload a log, but apparently it's huge. I'll try again later when it's not 3:30 in the morning.

I neeeeeeeeed this. NEEEEEEEEED IT. The current recruiting system is beyond useless if you want to use mods like EP. You're truly doing a service to humanity with this mod.

I don't have steam either and I'm on a Mac.

@Green Baron no worries, mate.. I know when I've met my match. Edit: FWIW, I've been flying powered airplanes with an actual pilot certificate since 1993 and have a degree in aeronautics, so I probably won't be on your roof anytime soon, either.

I give up. You win. I just don't have the energy to keep this up. Everyone, he won.

No. "Lift is increased on the left side and reduced on the right, resulting in a bank to the right. However, as a result of producing lift on the left, induced drag is also increased on the left side. The drag causes the left wing to slow down, in turn causing the nose of the aircraft to initially move (left) in the diretion opposite of the turn." ...lift is increased on the left side and reduced on the right. Increased on one side, reduced on the other. Almost as though the lift has become... asymmetrical. I never said yaw counters inertia (which for the layman, is the same as centrifugal force). I said inertia, centrifugal force, angular momentum, The Force, whatever you want to call it, will try to push the aircraft to the outside of the turn. If you don't apply some rudder correction in the direction of the turn, the HCL and The Force will be out of balance, resulting in a slip. In an uncoordinated turn, there is absolutely asymmetrical lift being generated, which is why at low speeds you're at risk of entering a spin. The lower wing in a turn has a lower relative wind across it than the raised wing, which will cause it to stall first. Yes, everything you've said about adverse yaw is correct. But adverse yaw is not the force pushing the aircraft to the outside of the turn, inertia is. Adverse yaw will push the nose slightly away from the turn, but the asymmetrical lift generated by the wings in the turn will still keep the aircraft banked into the turn and the HCL created from the bank will turn the aircraft, albeit in a slipping condition. This can be addressed by introducing a positive dihedral to the wings, but how many people do that in KSP? I'd be willing to bet that most KSP wings are symmetrical and flat. Did I simplify the interactions for the sake of explanation? Guilty. If you just bank, which is what most new folks are probably doing in KSP, without adding additional control inputs like yaw and pitch correction, The Force will try to push you to the outside of the turn, but the aircraft will still turn. You don't see it in real life, because in real life, turning is more than just banking, which is what my original post was trying to impart, which is possibly why turns seem weird to the OP. At this point, like I said, this is argument for the sake of argument, and we're arguing apples and baseballs. As a postscript - and I'm sure you'll howl about this, I am a college aviation professor. I cannot, unfortunately, name my institution. We had an instance two years ago where another professor was answering questions from student pilots on a Facebook page, and using his title and our school in his answers. We got smacked down for that, and the standing orders from our Department Chair was that we're free to discus things online and say what we do, but we're not allowed to name the school unless we get clearance from the school first. I'm not really interested in getting institutional clearance so that I can bicker on an internet forum about private pilot ground school stuff. Knowing my chair, I already know what his answer will be. Take that for what its worth, have fun with it.

Sigh. I give up. You're seriously arguing just to argue and you literally just presented yourself as being more knowledgeable about flight than actual pilots, a college professor who teaches it *and the FAA*. If I can literally quote to you from the Pilots Handbook (published by the FAA and used by actual pilots and flight instructors) and the Instrument Flying Handbook, and you can sit there with a straight face and say they're wrong and you know better... then there's no place left to go with this. I'm out. I concede.

Ach. Here we go. Nitpickers at 12 o'clock, 5 miles. 1. Aircraft in KSP generally rotate, operate and land well above normal aircraft operating speeds. Your particular outliers are exceptions. I didn't say it was impossible, I said it's not generally done. Congratulations on designing aircraft that land at subsonic speeds, I don't think most people land under 100 m/s. I could be wrong. Also, I know 100m/s is subsonic, I was being deliberately hyperbolic, so relax. 2. The main force acting in opposition to the horizontal component of lift in a turn is centrifugal force. Yes, adverse yaw is a thing. Adverse yaw will tend to point the aircraft's nose away from the turn, but it is the balance between an aircraft's HCL and centrifugal force that creates a coordinated turn. Too much yaw control will cause the aircraft's HCL to be less than it's inertial force, resulting in a skid, not enough will create more HCL than inertia, resulting in a slip. Regardless of what causes the imbalance between HCL and centrifugal force, it is centrifugal force that you're working against in a turn. Refer to https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/FAA-H-8083-15B.pdf page 4-11 for more details. So what I said remains true... you're using yaw control to keep HCL and centrifugal force in balance. If you just bank an airplane and take your hands and feet off the controls, you're stupid, but also the airplane will react by raising the nose slightly and yawing away from the bank (due to adverse yaw, as you astutely pointed out). It will slip, and that's due to an imbalance between HCL and centrifugal force, which is caused by adverse yaw left uncorrected. There are other factors too, wing blocking in a slip or a skid reduces the available lifting area, and the aircraft's slipstream will also play a minor role. Regardless, it's inertia that you're working against, and inertia that creates the offset g-forces that enable a turn-and-back indicator to work. Interestingly, this is also what leads to inertial coupling, which is where the total inertia of an aircraft overcomes the authority of the control surfaces. Since almost all of our speeds in KSP are a hair shy of ridiculous, that's a lot of what you're contending with. Most people, I would hazard to say, don't bother at all with coordinated turns, they just roll 90 degrees, pull back on the stick to convert the aircraft's VCL to HCL, and let the wings do all the work. As for asymmetric lift, I stand by what I said. refer to https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aircraft/airplane_handbook/media/FAA-H-8083-3B.pdf In particular, turn to chapter 11-1, which says: "Deflection of trailing edge control surfaces, such as the aileron, alters both lift and drag. With aileron deflection, there is asymmetrical lift (rolling moment) and drag (adverse yaw). " It's also this asymmetric lift during a turn that can lead to spin entry. Again, in the FAA-H-8083-3B, refer to page 4-12. If the angle of attack of one wing becomes critical during a turn and it stalls, you get a spin. Why would that happen? Say it with me: asymmetrical lift in a turn. At low speed, we also refer to this is a "cross control stall" and it's one of the leading causes of traffic pattern accidents. If you're in an uncoordinated turn at low speed, the lower wing will stall before the higher one, resulting in a spin. If it happens at low altitude, you just bought yourself a farm. 3. In addition to being a pilot for over 20 years, I'm a full-time college aviation professor. I might have an idea or two how aircraft work.

From a pilot's perspective, I can tell you there are two things you're experiencing that make it feel weird. Stock/FAR arguments aside, and mathematical proofs notwithstanding, there are two things that dramatically impact aircraft performance: 1. Speed is indicated in a scale you're not used to, and wholly unrealistic. We typically don't measure our forward (or vertical) velocity in m/s. We measure them in knots and feet/second. Most aircraft under 18,000' MSL operate at 250kts or less, even those sexy fighter planes and airliners. That's a mere 128m/s. The slowest useable approach speed for most aircraft in KSP, even propeller-driven light aircraft using firespitter and KAX is around 65m/s. That's a blistering 126 knots, faster than the level cruise speed for most piston-driven light aircraft. For contrast, the recommended approach speed of a Boeing 757 is 132 knots, which is only 68 m/s. Keep that in mind next time you're trying to land a cessna mockup in KSP at 125 m/s. Also, as a result of this, most KSP aircraft cruise at entirely absurd speeds. A propeller-driven airplane cruising at 150m/s is blasting along at 291 knots, which would appear to be a blatant violation of FAR 91.117(a). Except it's not, because our altitude expectations are also wonky. We're used to measuring altitude in feet, not meters. The upper limit of most non-turbocharged piston aircraft is around 12,000' MSL, which is only 3,658 meters. 10,000 meters is about 32,000 feet MSL. 20,000 meters is pretty much in the stratosphere. And that's on Earth, Kerbin probably has smaller atmospheric layers. 2. There is zero turn coordination in KSP, unless you do it yourself (or use a mod). When you bank a real airplane, centrifugal force will try to push the airplane to the outside of the turn unless you apply yaw correction in the direction of the turn. The aircraft will still turn in the direction of the bank due to asymmetric lift, but the turn will be very inefficient, as you see in KSP. A properly coordinated turn requires both rudder into the turn, as well as slight back pressure on the controls to keep the nose from dropping. In KSP, we tend to just bank the wings and hope for the best, whereas in properly controlled flight, a turn requires adjustments along all three axis, and possibly power adjustments as well. Also, going back to point #1, because we're flying at 90% of ludicrous speed all the time, there's a fair amount of inertial coupling going on as well, so your control surfaces either have to be cartoonishly large or are ineffective outside of the small subsonic sweet spot that real aircraft operate in.

Jesus Smoking Christmas, guys. I made a simple observation. @NathanKell was good enough to come on here and address it specifically and in great detail (thank you, Nathan!), without making excuses or obfuscating. Can we possibly have one thread that doesn't involve us collectively keel-hauling the devs over everything? I'm the last person to defend Squad's business practices, and I've been very vocal in my opinions about them, but even I have to admit the rancor is reaching the point of ridiculousness. If you continue to chastise these guys every time they speak, even when they're giving answers that they don't have to give, in levels of detail that they're not obliged to provide, eventually they're going to stop communicating with the community. He could have just given a simple, "gee, thanks, that's interesting" and let it go, but he didn't he tried to be forthright with us, but we just can't resist the urge to punch down at every opportunity. Give the guys a break, already. Thank you, @NathanKell for addressing my OP. I appreciate it.

Or, you know, make this the tier 4/5 skills. Pilots are pilots. By current nomenclature, Karbal scientists and engineers are basically what NASA calls "payload specialists"... they do one thing and do it well. Maybe when they get to tier 4 and tier 5, they can graduate to "mission specialist" and become scientist/engineers. For the tier 4/5 you could have pilots become mission commanders, which would let them be pilot/engineers or pilot/scientists. Or vice-versa.

@NathanKell thanks for the feedback and the explanation. I wonder what the heck I had going on, if that's the case.

Not the solution, but I think I see WHY it's happening. @NathanKell I think you were working this, so maybe this will help you. So I had a station in a circular equatorial orbit at 350km. I docked a module with it at a right angle to the station, and presto... madness ensued. Just for fun though, I decided to crank that puppy up to 4X physics warp and watch what happened. Here's what I observed: The orbit isn't changing. It is, but actually it's not. I zoomed out and watched for a while and what I realized is that the apoapsis had actually become fixed in space, and the planet was pulling away from it. This accounts for the fluxuations, on one side of the sun, the planet will pull away from the apoapsis, on the other side, it's going to move back towards it. The orbit isn't changing, just the opposite. The apoapsis is almost acting like it's disconnected from the body it's orbiting, and the body is pulling away from it and moving back towards it depending on where you are its solar orbit, and the apoapsis is acting like it's tidally locked to the sun. So if I'm looking at the orbit of Kerbin from the top-down, and Kerbin is at the 3 o'clock position in relation to the sun, and my apoapsis is at the 3 o'clock position in relation to Kerin, then in half of an orbit, Kerbin will pull away from my apoapsis and my periapsis will be in the center of the planet, but it will appear in the micro scale that my craft has wandered several hundred kilometers off course by the time Kerbin gets to the 9 o'clock position in relation to the sun. As it continues to the rest of its orbit, Kerbin settles back into it's original position in relation to the apoapsis, and everything looks normal again. Well, except for the times the station re-entered before that happened, but it was all in the name of science, so Kerbal losses were expected. If you start at the 6 o'clock position, you have a much better chance of completing an orbit. Just to see if that was the case, I did the exact same experiment using RSS in sandbox, so that I'd have everything in a larger scale, and I observed the same phenomenon with a station orbiting Earth at 360 km in the same orientations (3 o'clock/ 3 o'clock), but much more pronounced due to the larger bodies involved. And more re-entries because the station had no hope of completing an orbit. So, hope that helps. EDIT: I'm not usually a fan of hyperedit, but I downloaded it to try it out. If I used HE from the tracking station to force the station back to it's normal orbit, then all of the weirdness went away. The station would stay in orbit, the ap and pe would behave as expected, and no phantom forces seemed to come into play - no random tumbling or other bizarre behavior. Is it possible that the act of docking in orbit somehow breaks the link between the station's orbit and the body it's orbiting?

*Puts on professor hat* In all fairness, your survey has only been live for 3 hours and collected 54 respondents (as I write this). To be statistically significant, with 95% confidence, you'll need 383 respondents. Additionally, in terms of survey design, for each independent variable (KSP version) you've grouped your positive respondents into one response group, while your negative respondents are split between two, with neither of them being a moderate response (as has been pointed out.) Several people have stated that they joined the positive response group, even though had there been a more moderate negative response option, they would have chosen it. The result will be a bias toward the positive group in direct comparisons. If the "bugs are killing me" option was intended to be a neutral compromise option between positive and negative responses, the phrasing of the option gives it a negative-slant, potentially pushing moderate responses into the positive option, again creating potential bias. It will be difficult to establish a trend, also, because you're not really comparing a rate, you're comparing snapshot data, and that data could be skewed by the respondent's last experience with KSP, or biased by attitudes on the forum. So this is less data collection and more opinion poll, and opinion polls are not really considered "data" because opinions are both situationally dynamic and subject to question bias. Lastly, while your goal is to collect data, you did not indicate what the purpose of the data collection is, or what you hope to prove or disprove. A better method of data collection would be to ask less subjective questions such as: Do you experience frequent crashes? Do you experience occasional crashes? Do you experience an insignificant number of crashes? Do you experience no crashes? Has the current state of the game affected your ability or motivation to play? Do you alter your gameplay because of the possibility of crashing? Would you say you've been generally satisfied or dissatisfied with KSP <version>? What version of KSP are you using? Do you use mods? What type OS are you playing on? What is the approximate age of your computer? This would enable you to say: Out of N respondents, X1 number of players of version A experience frequent crashes. Of that set, Y number report that it has affected their gameplay. Of those who continue to play, Z number report that they alter their gameplay due to those crashes. X2 number of players report occasional crashes... etc You would also be able to perform some basic regression to see if there are any significant trends among operating systems, computer hardware, KSP versions, etc. That would probably, actually be hard data that would be useful to the community and the devs. But then, on the other hand, if your goal is to run a biased opinion poll to silence the whiners, you're on target. ***Professor hat off On a lighter note, it's Towel Day. Don't Panic!

Have more than one? Align one to 5 degrees and one to 19. That way you can land your jets and crash your spaceplanes with the same precision!

Instrument approaches (fixed pitch) are planned at 3 degrees. Visual approaches (pitch for airspeed) are generally 5. KSP approaches are anywhere from 3 to vertical in my experience. It wouldn't have to have an external window, just let it be on all the time, but yeah, I get your point about being tough to see. I've been flying IRL now for 23 years and I'll freely admit that in KSP I let Kramax do my approaches.

Two words: Realism overhaul. It's like a whole new game.

Not to be pedantic, but runways are never labeled as 0. It would have to be 18-36. The 0/18 thing has been setting my OCD off something fierce. While we're dreaming, I'd really like a PAPI or VASI, too.