MaxwellsDemon

Not garbage at all. No company makes a profit with one sale. Now... if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my daytime job of malevolently collecting data on how our customers like our product. Because, you know... evil.

Please don't tell me you're that naive. You don't get to make that call. There's a whole society of people around you that have to get along with you. Unless you go off and live in a hole in the desert, that's how it's always going to be.

Nobody is interested in buying one data point. You, as an individual customer, don't count. You only count as a part of an aggregate.

Hate to break it to you, but your address is public information. Always has been, always will be. (For that matter, how much you paid for the house you're living in is public information. If you don't believe me, check with your county auditor's department.) It's not "naive," it's fact. I have personal experience in this area. Sure, I could track one of my customers individually and see their every purchase, but what do I get from that? At most, I get confirmation from one data point that a larger algorithm is working correctly.

Information like this doesn't work like that. Companies don't give a hoot in heck about individual data points-- they want to aggregate the data to construct a trend. What percentage of Windows 10 users are having this problem with the software? That sort of thing. Individual data points are building blocks; they have no interest in tracking you individually.

Look, folks, this is a tempest in a teapot. People say they want "privacy," whatever that means (and it means something different to every individual), but they also say they want individual attention. It's like going to the doctor and expecting him to cure you but refusing to tell him any of your symptoms. Exterior example: I use a membership card for my grocery store. Periodically, the store mails me a flyer telling me about specials and sales on the products I tend to buy. So, I get to buy those things I want for a little less, and the store gets a sale. Win-win. A game company wants to know how to improve their product. But they can't come right out and say, hey, what do you think we should do with the "white.rabbit.obj" module to make it run better on your machine? First, you have no idea what the "white.rabbit.obj" module is, and second, you don't care, so long as the game runs correctly. How do you think the company is going to find out how to improve the product?

The fact that you can avoid it indicates that it's entirely voluntary to begin with.

Pardon me, but nobody's forcing you to upgrade. Your copy of (say) 1.0.5 will still run just as well as it did before. I also don't understand the paranoia about information collection. In a nutshell, people expect companies to anticipate their needs and wants and respond to them, but they don't want the companies to know what their needs and wants are? What do you imagine companies do with this information? The way some people talk, it's like they expect TT staff to break into their house and rearrange their furniture in the middle of the night....

Even when you know that before you buy?

If you really want to get an answer without public comment, you could contact SQUAD/TakeTwo directly, you know. Posting publicly in this manner really suggests to me that you are either trying to draw attention, make waves, or do something else, rather than your ostensible purpose of obtaining information. It's not enough for you to ask the question-- you want to be seen to be asking the question, evidently. At least, that's how I read it.

Ooooookay...

If you don't want public comment, don't post in a public space.

Aside from the usual "don't poke the bears" advice, I'm not actually expecting a bunch of mod updates too quickly, for these reasons: 1. I don't comprehend how extensive the changes were on the back end, and it's generally not a good idea to assume that things one doesn't understand are easy. 2. Making History is impending and it's already known that there will be a 1.4.1 in the near future. If I were a mod programmer, I'd want to wait to see what those do before doing any heavy updating. 3. Personally speaking, I'm still cruising along in 1.3.1 and I wasn't even planning on doing anything with 1.4 till Making History is available. My two cents, your mileage may vary, etc.

I think part of it is also holdover from the V-2-influenced R-1, R-2, and following... the V-2/A-4 was of an 'ogive' (sort of ellipsoid) shape, as were the followons, though as Korlev and company went to work on them they started to straighten out. The V-2 heritage is most obvious in the shapes of the strapons.

That seemed like a very soft launch... I guess I almost missed it because I was looking past it to Making History.

Fiddled with a core module for a revised Mir-type station in the limited time I had available; then, noticed 1.4 had become available and downloaded it (but have not yet done anything with it yet).

Snuck up on a lot of us-- I haven't even had time to download it yet!

Troublemaker!

This is a whole lot of ado about very little. Company legal departments try to stake out their territory as big as possible to lay the groundwork for potential future actions, regardless of whether the company itself will ever actually take those actions; they're just trying to establish their claim (and, the more cynical might say, trying to justify the existence of the legal department). I can almost guarantee that the worst fears of people stirred up about this will never come to pass. I can also almost guarantee that the majority of the employees at the company themselves are privately rolling their eyes at the legalisms emanating from the legal department. Companies that attempt to micromanage what their customers do rapidly find themselves out of business. As we say at our firm, "If we don't take care of our customers, rest assured, someone else will." Relax, and enjoy launching.

Just a general comment: still love this mod. The only thing it's good for is looking cool on the pad, and it does that very well. Thanks again for the upkeep. RE the sort of oversized part that comes with the mod: I simply clip it into the body of the rocket to hide it. You get the "steam" that appears to be coming from somewhere indeterminate, just like the real thing. (I try to position the emissive part at the top of a stage, rationalizing that that's where the LOX is most likely to be...) I have noticed the occasional other-direction behavior, but have rationalized it as random up- or down-drafts (I haven't seen it blow completely backwards; I'll keep an eye out).

Again, not much time to devote to KSP (story of my life lately ) but I did poke around with redesigning some Mir-type station modules. (Typical. I get the station built and then immediately start redesigning it...)

Yeah, having to plan for habitat and supplies (even on the easier modes) adds a whole raft of complexities. No more putting one poor Kerbal in a Mk1 capsule and sending him off for years...

It's just that I know I'm going to want to play with the new 'historical' parts. I predict I will try to keep my current campaign going, right up till the mods reach a critical mass of updatedness (as per @RizzoTheRat), and then I will restart once again. (To be fair, I do enjoy the early game where you have to compensate for not having much to work with yet, so it's not wholly a loss...)

I have discovered the *real* challenge of playing KSP. It's called "Try to make it to Duna in a campaign game before the next version comes out when you'll inevitably want to restart your campaign."

Had my first real launch abort. For some reason, the rocket started to head off course at launch-- after trying to wrest control back, pilot Piper Kerbin hit the red button. The LES worked as intended, and she and her three scientist passengers landed safely 5.4 km from KSC. Not sure what happened-- Gravity Turn didn't seem to kick in when it should have. Almost certainly operator error, but not sure what quite yet. I could've hit revert, of course, but then I wouldn't know if the LES worked in a real situation... Update Wed 7 Mar: It happened again, in almost the same fashion. I took a close look at the vehicle in the VAB, and it looks like something is out of kilter-- the vehicle's center of mass is off. More investigation is indicated...