swjr-swis

I didn't want to, but since you ask explicitly, here goes. I was adding to @Red Iron Crown's words ... ..by giving an example from your simplified version of the rules, which add the following words... ..which, while very simply and concisely worded, allows the freedom to interpret it as "it's ok to post pictures of other parts of you". I was trying to not make it too obvious, but that is now irrelevant.

Circumstances often make us take decisions based on less information than we would've liked in hindsight. Not much one can do about that. At the time, stopping was the right decision for you, because you were burned out. The fact that you placed the DB and code up for continuation speaks of consideration for the community. That after you've had some time to recover and reflect you even consider a revival tells me that your break did you well: you managed to overcome what burned you out. That's really all that should matter, so don't let regrets spoil your recovery. I am not voting on the poll, because I consider it not relevant. I'm not against the idea of KerbalStuff coming back, I appreciated the service it offered and this break does not change my opinion of it. At the same time, I would keep using SpaceDock as well, they have their own view on the interface and it's under development, but for me it has worked well. Ideally, the two would coexist (and who knows, maybe cooperate). I wouldn't say it's a severe departure. The basic service is the same. There's a different view on the interface offered, but remember that at your departure, you mentioned having ideas for an overhaul that didn't get realised. If you had found reason and energy to go on with that in the past months, who knows what KerbalStuff would look like by now? They took up where it was, and with that initial burst of energy they decided to do some work on it. Not really that unexpected, I think. We users are a fickle and ungrateful lot. One moment we're in a cheering mood cause someone stepped up and 'rescued' us from the dreaded Modless Void (or the Forge of Curses, whichever scares you most), the next moment we're complaining because said saviours don't give us 99.999% uptime and flawless execution. Don't give complaints too much energy. There is of course a third option your poll did not mention: perhaps offering assistance with SpaceDock. VITAS did mention they are shorthanded at the moment.

If you mean the panels, a bit more like the HabTech ones would be welcome instead of the full white. But for the open trusses, the framework itself, I rather like yours better. The HabTech ones do look nice, but they seem a bit too.. too solid. Too much mass for their function. I rather prefer the minimal and open look of yours.

Thou shalt have fun. No risking Kerbals (unless it's fun). No part clipping (unless it's fun). No over-engineering (unless it's fun). No mods (unless it's fun). No exploiting KSP physics (unless it's fun). No unnecessary grinding, challenges or restrictions (unless it's fun). No spoiling the fun (unless it.. hey!). If it stops being fun, go find fun in another game.

A week and some beer goggles later: Maybe that's where you should've started looking... Problem solved, so all's well that ends up in orbit.

I am assuming you've already checked the forum for threads that give basic rocket design 101 tips, mentioning things like checking that center of mass stays above/ahead center of lift/drag even when stages emtpy or decouple, etc (if not, hint hint). Maybe you are trying too hard? I know, sounds silly, but stick with me. A basic rocket should need very little help to follow a natural east-prograde trajectory. So try to build it with as few fins/reaction wheels/gimbal as you can get away with first, and only add to it if it's clear that what is there is too weak to do what it must. But it sounds like you have already tried all the tools... so, have you considered your launch profile? Perhaps your chosen trajectory (or the way you control the rocket) is causing more of an issue than the design. Try to keep the rocket as much as possible on the prograde vector, with as little manual control input as possible, for a very smooth gravity turn and minimal fighting with the atmosphere. Many of the problems you mention are only really a problem when you start pointing outside the circle of the navball prograde marker (causing very harsh and hard to fight drag vectors), or because too much manual input oversteers and then needs correcting, causing more and more oscillation. I find that a well built rocket is capable of doing a near to perfect and very repeatable gravity turn almost entirely by itself, at most needing a tiny nudge a bit after lift-off to start the prograde slide (a few test launches can quickly show at what speed and how much inclination that one nudge needs to be, but usually at between 50-100m/s nudge to about 80-85 degrees east), and maybe a bit of throttling to keep apoapsis not too far ahead to minimize the need of circularizing (depends a bit on the rocket and staging, but 40-60 seconds ahead of your craft until you reach target tends to produce very nice results). Again, depends on your rocket and staging design, but aim to be at 45 degrees inclination somewhere around 10-15km altitude, 20 degree at around 30-35km, and level with the horizon around 50-55km. There's still a lot of wiggle room with that to account for various rocket designs and sizes. And watch what happens when the speed indicator switches from surface to orbit: if there is a clearly visible jolt in the prograde marker, it means your gravity turn can be improved - a good gravity turn will hardly twitch the marker at that moment.

So... am I the only one that wants tourist EVA ability, just so I can kick them out of my craft at the nearest space rock for being too rowdy?

The undamaged plane: After losing half the wing surfaces while flying through one of the hangars at the island: Valentina can land anything...

I will agree that it would be nice if mods were always given licenses that allowed maintenance after the original author stops, and/or forking to accommodate different points of view on the mod's usage or development. That's as far as I go though. The thread title is pretty ironic, as pointed out, since it says more about those who feel the way the OP does than about mod authors, and that type of attitudes is exactly one of the factors why mod authors or hosts get burned out and stop. The OP is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. I also notice, not very surprisingly, that the OP makes no mention of what is done to make the mod authors feel supported and appreciated enough to want to continue with their thankless work. Snarky complaints and no support - wouldn't we all be giving 110% of ourselves under those working conditions? I too have lost a few mods to an author deciding to 'take their toys and leave', quite literally because they even took down the sources. It was a learning moment, so now: I learned to play without those mods, and after a bit of time, I was ok with that. KSP is quite fun without any mods at all as well, I discovered. I look carefully at the licenses of mods. I tend to skip the ones that place restrictions on maintenance or forking by others, or offer no sources at all. I accept that those things are at the authors' discretion, but it is also at my discretion to pick and choose for my own reasons which mods I will use. I diligently download sources of mods I like enough that I would consider doing some editing/recompiling myself to continue their usage - even if the licenses do not allow publishing, I can still do it for my own personal use. I consider it my own responsibility to provide continuity to my game, not the author's. I try to avoid being a factor for mod authors to quit, and I try to be supportive of them in what ways I can. There's never guarantees, but all bits help.

I've looked at this for 10 minutes straight, and still the most intelligent reaction I can muster is - Huh?? There is zero connection between SpaceDock server size or bandwidth and mod downloads on the one hand, and Squad's choices regarding their method of offering a pre-release version of the game on the other. ZERO. SpaceDock has had a few issues, but download bandwidth has not been one of them. Downloading KSP mods has never been faster than it has been since SpaceDock started hosting them. The speed difference couldn't be more obvious, and if you're using CKAN, I suggest you pay attention to what host the mods are downloading from and at what speed, before complaining about something that is clearly not a problem. I would be really interested to see the specs of the server and the bandwidth and CDN setup that you plan on offering as an alternative. Since apparently that's the centerpiece of your marketing argument, it better blow SpaceDock's 'small servers' completely out of the water to make any sense. Can we see some hard data? At least it's clear now what the actual reason is for this whole thing: someone is patently unhappy about not having access to the 1.1 pre-release. Nothing much anyone can do about that now, except just pointing out that you are completely misdirecting your displeasure at the wrong target. How about instead offering Squad to host a patch server for KSP pre-releases for non-Steam users? At least that would direct your energy towards the real source of your displeasure.

Nebulae and star clusters could be very visible under the right conditions, we can see quite a few of them with the naked eye, although they won't be quite as dramatic as many of the false light pictures that we often see published. The Milky Way too is quite visible on the night sky when you're in an area with low light pollution, even with the detrimental effects of the atmosphere. So from space, at an angle away from the galactic plane and at about the same distance away from the center, the spiral should be quite a spectacle to behold against the dark of the rest of space. Especially the core. A closely-knit group of galaxies, like our local group, is likely the biggest structure of sorts that we could visibly make out. Seeing a galaxy cluster with the naked eye is highly unlikely. There are only a few galaxies that we can see with the naked eye as it is, and I think all of them are in the local group. Galaxy density in a cluster is also far lower than star density in a galaxy, even allowing for the scale difference: clusters are usually about 100-1000 galaxies, whereas most galaxies hold billions of stars concentrated in a much smaller volume. In most clusters, the clustering doesn't even become apparent until one 'zooms out' several orders of magnitude, at which distance all sources of visible light in galaxies have become too faint to spot with the naked eye. So I'd say a tight group of galaxies is about as grand as we can expect to see out there.

I am curious as to what the real reason behind this is. 'It also hosts for other games' and the ever-easy 'malware' fear mongering sounds to me like reaching for an excuse. If that was truly the 'popular' opinion, sites like the Nexus wouldn't be the huge success they are. So... what is not being said here? I for one am rather immediately suspicious of the cloak and dagger feel of this thread/proposal, which makes me very unlikely to feel like using this new site you're proposing. Unless of course, you actually have some good and founded reasons for SpaceDock not fitting the bill anymore. P.S.: your poll misses an entry - "I am already supporting/using KerbalStuff V2 (aka SpaceDock)."

Night time brings out the pretty in explosions... And sometimes it's good for hiding your intentions...

The tiniest changes to offset of a part that affects CoM or CoL can sometimes ruin what was a perfectly balanced craft just before, and it's hard to keep track of the changes one makes while building, even when one is in the habit of saving progressing versions of a craft. I remember working on a tiny speedboat that at one point was balanced exactly right for a speed record run. I did several launches and speed runs and it was nice and repeatable, and I didn't even need to do anything other than apply throttle once it was in the water. I decided the boat itself was done, but the decoupling undercarriage that was supposed to bring it from the runway to the water needed a bit of work. Somewhere along working on that undercarriage, I changed something on the boat that I somehow managed not to save, and no amount of tweaking later got me the same results anymore. The problem was obviously not pilot error or variability in control, since literally all I had to do was decouple/stage the undercarriage to sink away, and then apply throttle. Whatever it was I moved, it was enough to not allow it the same results as before. It happens.

Sounds like half of my craft would get reported then (for varying degrees of absurd and silly).

I do hope it gets fixed to work. In the meantime, perhaps a compromise: instead of docking ports at the ends, place surface-attached Jr ports on the central girders and on the tanks, and attach them that way.

The docking port trick worked up to 1.0.5, not in pre-release at the moment (and I really hope it's considered a bug that needs fixing). Alternatively, don't use the multi-couplers, but use girders and surface attach the FL800 tanks in symmetry around that. Use the girders as the attach nodes above and below and ignore the top/bottom nodes of the tanks. Put one fairing on one of the ends, and close it on the other end.

Pretty sure Squad has yet to master reading minds. Right? <adjusts tin foil hat just in case> Of all the suggestions so far, this is sounding like the best option yet. It's definitely a better solution than having what looks very deceptively like a better place to take off and land but in practice is a death trap. So, let's make the tier 0 runway not simply more, but *exactly* like the grass field around it, even down to being at the same height level, and just put some marker/lights down. It'll be better for take off and landing (grass field 'better'), and for landings, the markings will be a way to train aligning ourselves until we get the hang of it, without having to fear careening off when we're not exactly aligned.

Hmm ok, yes, I measured with a quick mockup of the bow, I see the bridge is actually higher. Could still use the fairing with a bit of clipping, but the parts that clip may not detach cleanly. Ok, no fairing, will just mean more drag, so more fuel to lob it up there, but could still be done. I can recommend KerbalX as a good craft sharing site. Dropbox is pretty ok for sporadic file sharing.

Because in KSP, it pays to use KSP engineering (as opposed to Real Life engineering). Use the tools and capabilities you have to deal with the problems and limitations you have; there is no point in trying to use the actual tools and capabilities you have to solve imaginary problems and/or limitations (tip: Real Life is imaginary in KSP ).

Weight should not be the issue, I've put things 5 times that weight into space with stock 1.0.5, and I've seen heavier payloads than that too. So it's about handling the CoM and aerodynamics. My first instinct would be to build a 'pull' frame around it, rather than the usual push lifters - point the bow up, and assemble a wide circle of heavy lifter boosters around it that ultimately decouple from the top/bow of your craft. I see the back of either a BZ-52 radial attachment point or a Clamp-o-Tron docking port sticking out the bow about center-way between the two I-beams. If that is offset to be above the CoM when the craft is rotated bow-up, that can serve as the pull-point for the booster assembly (or if you are more comfortable doing it traditional push-style, point the bow down and build as a conventional payload). It's not easy to tell from just the pictures, but I think the large fairing should about be wide enough on it's widest to envelop the craft and simplify the aerodynamics. It'll need strutting, but that's not hard to do. In the pull frame design, place the fairing upside down from top to bottom. If the CoM is not aligned well and offsetting that BZ-52/docking port on the bow is not an option, you can add a bit of strategically placed disposable mass on a decoupler to bring the CoM where it needs to be. I don't expect it to be very problematic at all. Is the craft file available somewhere, for us to have a try at assembling a lifter?

First, second, third time... sure. After about the fourth time, it's really just spam with no further function. Or in the case of using an actual scientist when doing this... it's useless spam from the get-go. I too would appreciate a toggle somewhere to disable that warning permanently, even if it defaults to on for each save.

I think that's good way of going about it. From my part: I have made that beta link my main spacedock link now, so I'll be a permanent beta tester, by choice. I don't consider my need of SpaceDock critical, so I am ok if stuff sometimes doesn't work as expected, I can spot and report any issues, or otherwise offer feedback. I know I can always 'revert' to the stable one if the beta is not working and I really need a mod. I get what you're saying, but 24 hours is a serious overestimate. 8 hours/day to spend on the site would be the most anyone could expect even if you were being paid for this, and you're not, so even that is stretching it. So don't overburden yourself, 'asap' in this context should really mean 'when I can reasonably get to it', and we'll accept that. From my own experience in large scale datacenter transition & transformation projects: I agree with this, as long as you ensure you have a stable roll-back situation prepared.

Uhm, guys, from where I am standing: you both make reasonable points for your position, but you're also both allowing this exchange to escalate. We don't want to see the next community mod site host burned out, and we don't want to see mod authors running off to curse in search of stability. No one is doing anything out of malice here, and the intent -of both of you- is to get a good mod delivery to the users. I for one appreciate the work both of you do, and considering it's volunteer work, I accept that sometimes, it can come with bugs/problems (heck, we're accustomed to accepting that even for paid stuff). So, may I suggest taking a step back and a deep breath, to keep the peace? I am sorry that waving a flag is all I can offer; I can read python and make little corrections, but coding it is a level beyond me at the moment. I also have no servers to offer an alternative host. I need you guys to be able to work together. Don't make me beg. It's not pretty. Please?

Well, like I said some posts ago, it's not information I'm particularly interested in, I'm fine with things as they are. It probably would end up cluttering things. Just, since you asked us to test, I did, and that's what I noticed. That would be a way of solving this, offering the information to those interested enough to click for it, but not cluttering the main craft list. I'd be fine with that. Well, the feature is there, and it's pretty visible. I would suggest that if it's not seeing much use, and there haven't been complaints about lack of votes (we would be seeing that here, right?), it's fine to leave it the way it is.