Hagen von Tronje

If you mean is RO good enough that if Squad had developed it internally and marketed it as $5-10 DLC, would I have bought it? Probably, I bought several Mount & Blade expansions that were more or less the same as a total conversion/overhaul mod by the developer and think they were pretty good. RO already exists and is free, but on the other hand if Squad released an "official" RSS with highly detailed planet maps, named features (i.e. if you visit Olympus Mons, your biome is Olympus Mons, etc), and integrated visual and environmental physics upgrades (detailed and animated Jovian atmosphere, real wind storms, etc), I'd pay money for that one feature provided it would be compatable with existing mods (or mods were equally easy to develop for it so that a strong modding community were inevitable). The main thing I find myself craving, whether it's stock or RSS, is surface detail.

With KAS, you just put a pipe connector port on each vessel then have an EVA kerbal connect/disconnect the pipe (integral to the connector, no need to bring a pipe item). For that matter the EVA kerbal can bolt on the connectors as needed so you don't have to orient vessels any particular way. Ground pylons can be used to extend pipe as far as reasonably needed or provide a buffer if physics are being unkind to direct connections between ships. The winches also function as docking mechanisms, so you could use one of those as a flexible hose. By far the simplest method of doing fuel transfers IMO. And frankly better looking as Rocketeer says, I much prefer a simple hose/pipe hookup. I strongly advise against leaving ships hooked up via pipe without KJR, though. The physics loading on stock tends to rip things up if you do this, KJR's physics buffer softens it enough to be pretty safe with stable structures though. Never leave them connected via winch cable though, that ends badly no matter what.

Depends on what it has. But even if it has nothing but some remaining dV, you could still: - Dip down to 95km to do a visual inspection of the surface, possibly leave it here as an "Eve cam" for future use - Dip it down below 90km to find out how much fun it is to enter Eve's atmosphere - Shoot it out to Gilly if you'd like to see the tiniest celestial body (not cheap on dV though) - Maybe drop it into Moho encounter, capture is difficult but a flyby isn't unreasonable if you can exit Eve orbit

This is my "Tower of Power" unit, used for supplying fuel and power for permanent installations on atmospheric bodies. The tank and thuds are just landing gear, removed via stack separator, then picked up and disposed of (KIS).

Shot in the dark but FAR flight assistance can do this to you as well.

Sure. It's just that the cave always leads to an explosion.

Thanks Sal, after old man has a nap I'm going to install Kubuntu and see how things go. Hopefully smoothly and I don't have to bug you with anything.

I spent most of my Sunday not playing KSP, but troubleshooting KSP. To my continuing bafflement, it would appear that installs that were under the memory limit before and stable for weeks can decide at whatever time that they need even more memory than that on startup, and become impossible to start. Maybe it's the save file growing, maybe I'm just flying too close to the sun and this is breaking things in creative ways, but it's going from innocent crashes to major gamebreaking glitches, like the atmosphere permanently disappearing, and I don't think it's fair to ask people to troubleshoot an install that I've not only modded to hell and back, but modded the mods in (nor do I think I want to put in even more hours to troubleshoot much further along these lines when the memory cap is always a threat). Either way, much as I like to tinker, I don't like to play guessing games about whether I will get to play KSP today. The solution to me seems pretty obvious: switch to Linux x64 client and enjoy the luxury of practically unlimited memory. Obviously I have google, I can see instructions on how to install Ubuntu written for people with even less knowledge than myself; but I've seen several players mention they switched to Linux for KSP, and I'd like to know how that worked out and what was the best/simplest approach when your goal, in the short term at least, is just to play KSP in peace and use the hardware you paid for. Questions: - Seems common knowledge that Ubuntu is the most popular distro. Any reason to choose something else, or anything I should know about distros relevant to KSP? - I have an SSD and HDD. The SSD runs Windows and games that benefit from an SSD; I'd prefer to install Linux to the HDD for now so I don't have to worry about competition for disk space and KSP doesn't seem to benefit from an SSD anyway. Is it difficult to run both Windows and Linux on the same PC for this purpose? - Once I get Linux installed and KSP installed for Linux, is modding it and playing it going to be pretty much the same as on Windows? It's not that I'm a Windows fan so much as I'm getting kind of old and don't like surprises. Given that I never see Linux or Mac versions of mods, I guess it must be the case that KSP's internal file structure is the same regardless of OS? Sorry if this comes across as gripy, I don't mean it. I don't actually blame Squad or anyone else for a heavily modded install getting clunky, just exhausted from reinstalling dozens of mods from scratch only to keep bumping into the same problem, so I figure why not solve the problem the most direct way.

I'm using Raster Prop Manager, ASET, and B9 cockpit props, and some custom edits to put more functional instrumentation into all cockpits/pods. When I fly planes in this career, I typically stick a JSI basic camera into the nose so I have a takeoff/landing cam. Some advanced cockpits like B9 and QuizTech have integrated landing cams, but I haven't unlocked those goodies yet. Trying to land on a runway in a stock Mk2 cockpit is awful, clearly not made with IVA flight in mind. I've got a few cockpits installed with no MFD panels, but if they don't have great visibility or some other redeeming quality I cut them from this install. But I completely agree, it's not only satisfying, I have learned a lot by doing it this way! If there's one thing KSP "realism" mods and IVA flying teach you, it's that astronauts/cosmonauts are stone cold badS to do what they do.

Yes, primarily because part count is such a gamekiller. If having a ton of struts didn't hurt your performance at all, I'd say "who cares, space tape", but the feasability of craft that certainly should be capable of working is limited by part count, and KJR is a prime way to reduce part count. But the big one to me is the physics buffer on load. This is a straight up bugfix (well, bug band-aid). Nobody wants their craft that were motionless on save to impact the ground with catastrophic force on load, that alone makes KJR a "not playing without it" mod for me.

Did my first Mun flyby in an "extra hard" career game, using TAC LS, FAR, etc, and done entirely from IVA/EVA. No getting out for a view, I fly from the inside only unless something in the interface utterly requires that I go to outside view. All piloting is done with RPM props (and huge "props" to RPM, B9, ASET, etc, for making this not only possible but fun). Val almost died in the attempt, I was stuck on science, having harvested everything on Kerbin I had reasonable access to (greatly reduced science rewards), and just barely unlocked solar panels (needed to stay alive without bringing a rocket full of batteries), so this was pretty much a do or die situation for my career. She got back to Kerbin with less than 1% on all life support and reentered going nearly 3km/s with no heat shield (good ol' service bays!). The materials bay unfortunately broke up on splashdown, wasting maybe half the science I gained, but I considered that an acceptable sacrifice to get her home alive. Fortunately I finished two lucrative contracts and still got most of the other data home safe, so it was a mostly-success, and apparently at the limit of what constitutes a plausible munshot. Never been so tense as watching the speed bleed off on reentry, hoping it's just enough to not lose my favorite pilot and probably tank my career (most of my remaining funds had been spent on upgrades and the ship necessary to make this trip). What a relief!

I like that they introduce a valid and practical motive to create long term bases and stations. However, they are poorly balanced, they produce a really crazy amount of science. I find they feel closer to being balanced with things like TAC life support and greatly reduced science gains introduced, as well as career mode where you can sell science, but in either case they have the potential to be a lot more fun than they are. It would be nice if they had integrated scientific instruments (which would require moving instruments around in the tech tree, which is also fine, endgame science instruments just don't make a lot of sense unless you just want to sell science), and even an integrated antenna via shielded port. It's a big part, what kind of engineer can't put a thermometer in this? For that matter, it would look pretty awesome having integrated vents for atmospheric sampling and other visible instrumentation on the exterior surface. Would also be more fun if the lab counted up a percent of results for a celestial body, across biomes, and generated a fixed science based on how many you've collected. This would give a strong impetus to not only place the lab but to do further exploration around the planet/moon to make the lab more effective. Exploration is good. This would also solve the problem of the lab eventually needing to be pointlessly replaced by another lab in the exact same place when it burns through its allotment of experiments. Labs should also only count one per surface and one per orbit. A very silly and very effective technique it to simply bomb the flats of Minmus with small landers containing just a lab and instruments and antenna. You can have as many of you like meters away from each other and generate hundreds of science. That's the real balance problem. The lab should last indefinitely but only allow one per body and one in orbit above it. Again, this further encourages exploration rather than cheaply harvesting the low hanging fruit. I'm not sure how I feel about stock life support since I worry it will make the game even harder for new players to get into, but it really adds so much to labs. The imbalance is nearly entirely addressed by the difficulty of maintaining the installation long term, so you really can't time warp to unlimited science and have to "earn" it. Well, that and restricting yourself to one per body. Nothing for anyone to feel guilty about, though. Is it "cheap" to science bomb the Mun? Of course. It's also your prerogative, if you're tired of grinding science, you should do whatever makes you enjoy the game more. You didn't cheat anyone out of anything, you adjusted the situation to your preference.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Navball This has some great information on the navball's functions and the terminology we use with it. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Maneuver_node And here's a similar one on maneuver nodes - maneuver nodes are simply planned directional burns to adjust a trajectory in a desired way, and they're actually a great learning tool! In a sandbox game*, if you place a ship in orbit, you can click the orbit and create a maneuver node, from which you can adjust the trajectory along the paths described in these articles (pro/retrograde, anti/radial, anti/normal), and the game will provide immediate feedback on how this changes your trajectory and orbit by showing your predicted orbit after changes made. Toying around with it can really help you visualize how orbital physics work, or at least it helped me quite a bit! *The function is of course available in all modes, but in career you have to unlock it first.

The small gear bay at least is great. Best light in the game for stock, sit flush with wings, low profile, my only complaint is that it makes other landing gear look bad by comparison. Even most mod gear don't have inbuilt landing lights (and none as powerful, surprisingly), so the design on that one is A+++. If more gears are made/brought up to that level then I'll be very happy.

...you are aware that SAS can operate on engines with gimbal, on RCS, on wheels themselves, and anything else that generates force, right? SAS only has omnidirectional torque if you specifically gave it omnidirectional torque. If you give it directional controls, it will use those, and only those, because nothing else is available to it. I don't know what you mean by "manner in which it operates", but I can tell you SAS will not invent brand new magical forces to compensate for what you don't give it, so yes, you certainly can change the resultant behavior of SAS systems by designing a rover that only permits certain forces. It's really bizarre that you keep saying "everyone" agrees with how SAS works when it's not even clear that you understand the difference between SAS and a reaction wheel. I imagine you probably do, but you conflate terms regularly and aggressively and the entirety of what you've had to say has been built upon this extremely narrow understanding, so who can really tell? But I beg you, don't elaborate. I don't think I could hear "in case you haven't grasped it" one more time without gagging. That thing I said about being patronizing? Yeah. It's all I can stomach, I'm out.