Scoundrel

I agree. X should be reserved for killing throttle, SHIFT and CONTROL reserved exclusively for throttle, and Z for max throttle. The pulsing throttle suggestion is a good idea, but I suspect down the road that might have throttle limited engines with restart delays... if the placeholders in the engine descriptions are any indication of future intent. In which case methinks that a plugin would be the best route for that idea.

There's a lot wrong with your plane that balancing the fuel won't help: CoM is too far forward of your fuel 0 state; CoL is forward and low of where it needs to be (it should be just above and a little bit behind your CoM), and as your fuel is reduced, it moves even more forward, making the craft more unstable; and a bunch of other things that I won't mention because this thread is about fuel flow. But let's say for the sake of argument that Squad implemented fuel balancing and your plane remains as you have designed it: your plane would still pitch up as it is now because your fuel 0 state would push the CoM back enough that your plane becomes unstable (less noticeable now in .21 though). Now, if you built your plane so all your fuel flowed into one tank zeroed at the plane's CoM, and fuel lines ran from there to the engines, you wouldn't have any problems with fuel drainage. You just have to engineer it that way. Also, this would cause problems for some people's non-plane landers, as their main tank drains at the same rate their drop tanks do rather than empty their drop tanks first so their ascent stage wouldn't be half empty upon landing. We'd start seeing "we need assymetrical fuel flow" threads!

Yes. It was a screenshot of the mind map that HarvesteR and Novasilisko created sometime last year IIRC. Unfortunately HarvesteR has stated (on one of the livestreams, and maybe on a post somewhere if someone wants to track it down) that they'll be going with a much simplified version because of "suspension issues", whatever that means. Caveat: Squad reserves the right to change their mind about anything at any time, for any reason.

Not by any noticeable amount. Fuel lines have virtually no effect on lag, so you shouldn't be afraid to use fuel lines. Actually you (usually) have to insert fuel lines without using parts clipping because, unlike other parts, fuel lines don't react well to clipping. The best way to do it is by zooming in and placing them in the gap between tanks, though there are some people who install them inside, which doesn't work that well a lot of times. That said, you do have a point about aesthetics, which means that as builders we sometimes have to accept that functionality trumps aesthetics. My early non-clipping X-4 (my x-48 tribute) looked decent enough... except for the fuel lines that ran to the engines, which was something I had to accept in order for it to maintain its CoM... nowadays I'd just clip the intakes for airhogging and run the fuel lines through the wings. Anyways, you can either look at it as a negative, and hope fuel balancing becomes stock or use a mod; or you can think of it as an engineering challenge to overcome, and see if you can't problem solve it.

You can manage your fuel flow easily enough via the clever use of cubic struts and a handful of fuel lines. Check out Rune's or Cupcake's (or even my own, if you can find them) VTOLs to see how it's done.

I completely sympathize with your errant mouseclick, especially since I too have accidentally clicked it while trying to shut down a probe's reaction wheel to keep my duna rovers from flipping. Now, while I do not think a confirmation box for all flow state buttons is a good idea, I do believe that for probe cores there should be some sort of "are you sure?" button, simply because if you click it, that's it. It's dead Jim.

I like this idea. It's a shame it got lost in the dev thread.

This is what I'd like to see: Clicking the image will open a bigger version. Unfortunately there have been rumours that it'll be simplified by a whole lot, which I suppose is understandable.

It is and it isn't, but I see I've ruffled some feathers so I'll simply state that my position is: if it requires me to "pretend" that the propulsion system can be built because there is currently absolutely no way to physically build it, then, to me, it exists only in the realm of fantasy, no matter how good the theory, because plausibility does not equal possible reality (this is where we go into credibility, which is a completely different playground when it comes to speculative science fiction). This is why I consider (at this time) the Alcubierre drive in the same realm as a Higg's drive, which is an equally plausible drive, yet also pretty much in the realm of fantasy because the amount of time it will take just to confirm if they're a credible means of propulsion by itself is so speculative that it could be centuries before we know whether or not either are actually doable. If this attitude still offends you, then I apologize and I blame it all on Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein. Actually in SF that's called Technobabble, where as Handwavium is "Ignore the man behind the curtain" style of physics,. In order for the Alcubierre drive to function, we have to engage in handwavium because we still don't know exactly how exactly it will be propelled, plus there's those issues that pop up such as: surviving within the bubble; causality issues; mass-energy requirements; radiation; etc. that we have to ignore in order for it to work. That's actually what Unobtanium is (quoting from Atomic Rockets) "We can't build a physical example of it, but insofar as we can postulate that it can be built at all, the laws of physics say it would behave like thus and so." If we tried to design a vessel with an Alcubierre drive, the technical drawings would consist of detailed deck plans as well as life support and habitation/power systems and so forth, but the drive would consist of an empty box marked "Alcubierre drive" with a big fat question mark, and a link to a wikipedia page saying "this is how it would work if it existed." In comparison, the VASIMR would have pretty detailed drawings, as would Daedelus drives and other near future propulsion systems, and they would even have reasonably accurate calculations as to what their parameters are. Actually this is just more handwavium/unobtainium as opposed to macguffinite (which is sort of what you're hinting at, as macguffinite is something that is made up for the technology to function, which isn't applicable here since we don't have to imagine up a magical fuel for the Alcubierre drive to function). That wasn't ever my intent, but I can understand your distress at my semantics regarding speculative propulsion systems, so for that I apologize. As a hard SF fan it wouldn't have occurred to me to lump speculative science - even though I posited the concept as fantasy - with actual science fantasy... or that anyone else would, which is where I feel the friction is coming from. Anyhow, I'm enjoying the lively debate!

The warp drive/Alcubierre drive is no more realistic than the solar sail. The only difference is that the solar sail can and has been done with current tech... but the engineering to propel a manned spacecraft to another star within a human lifetime using solar sails still isn't feasible, and may never be, for a whole host of reasons (some of which MRab2 has pointed out). Thus it still requires some handwavium to work within the game. As for the Alcubierre drive, currently it requires lots of handwavium and lots of unobtanium to function: This is Miguel Alcubierre's twitter response to Sonny White's work. Then there's this interesting paper on how it would destroy/irradiate anything it's heading towards. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible or that it will never happen. Rather, I am just pointing out that there is nothing as of yet that confirms that it's possible let alone practical. It is still very much in the realm of theory, without a single experiment that confirms that such a drive could actually be built. Of course that could change in the next couple of decades, I won't argue that, but I think it's likely beyond the scope of KSP if HarvesteR is sincere about avoiding speculative technologies, even if he is a fan of Alcubierre.

I am unaware of any culture that considers condescension an acceptable form of humour. That aside, I personally hope for something blutonium fueled, like a Kerbal version of Orion: Note the Kerbal architecture on NovaSilisko's sexy Orion, originally posted in Nyrath's Orion thread. It would fit almost seamlessly within the game, and would allow rapid travel between stars in a reasonable time frame if we assume the star systems were quite close. After all, they don't have to be literal light years apart, they just have to be far enough to seem that way.

I think this summarizes my opinion on the subject: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/21126-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26375-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/18415-MultiPlayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/15727-Will-there-be-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28209-Multiplayer-in-KSP?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32889-KSP-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41159-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41162-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34703-EVA-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34401-Multiplayer-%28Not-like-the-others%21%29?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20820-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/39166-Discovery-and-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20670-Multiplayer-but-hear-me-out-please?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/15804-Multiplayer-Idea-0-17?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/36703-Multiplayer-or-at-least-more-things-going-on%21?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26775-Online-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34425-A-different-form-of-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34725-RPG-Multiplayer-Ideas?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35500-Multiplayer-servers?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33616-I-figured-out-how-to-do-Ksp-Multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33575-Multiplayer-I-know-but-bear-with-me?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29671-Multiplayer-%28Hear-me-Out%29?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32172-The-great-multiplayer-thread?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40442-A-thought-experiment-on-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34309-Idea-The-L-O-G-Multiplayer-System?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28079-Not-your-average-multiplayer-discussion?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/22053-Multiplayer-personal-server?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42404-Leave-what-you-think-the-devs-of-ksp-should-add-in-multiplayer-here?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/18324-Multiplayer-Idea-For-V-17-Or-possibly-V-18?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40038-Multiplayer-vs-time-compression-Why-not-%21?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/43507-MULTIPLAYER-developers-please-read-this-i-m-sure-your-gonna-like-it-%21%21%21%21?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/16861-Some-multiplayer-ideas-from-us-Kerbal-Redditors?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/10611-Idea-Multiplayer-Space-Conquest%21?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/15160-5-Quick-Ideas-for-Multiplayer-to-Consider-%28and-Single-player%29?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/23917-Solutions-to-warping-problems-%2AIF%2A-multiplayer-gets-added?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/38018-Yet-Another-Multiplayer-Idea-Thread-%28and-a-Part-Idea-to-boot%21%29?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/36739-In-Multiplayer-we-should-have-voice-chat-and-type-chat?highlight=multiplayer http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20870-A-way-to-impliment-multiplayer?highlight=multiplayer

My personal solution, which won't work for everyone, is to have a fuel truck by the runway, refuel the SSTO, then use the "recovery" button in the Tracking Center to recycle the fuel truck when it runs out of fuel. I mean, I personally would love being able to land the SSTO on the helipads and have the option of transferring fuel from the VAB into the fuel tanks, and perhaps something similar with the hangar/control tower building. Heck, I'd even like it if I could click on the kerbonaut complex and be able to have a guy pop out the front door. Methinks, though, that these types of suggestions are more of a polish kind of thing that they'd look at down the road when they put the KSC to rest to focus on other aspects of the game.

It would probably be safe to speculate that they'll make the average distance between stars be around .1 lightyears or less - meaning a completely unrealistic distance from each other - to keep the travel meaningful but not excessive. As has been shown by Scott Manley in this video , anything approaching realism would make the game boring and unplayable. Cap'n Skunky has posted on the Steam boards that HarvesteR is against any trans-stellar technology that requires handwavium and technobabble. How they intend to resolve it is another matter. Well, there's a difference between speculative drives (fusion) based on near-future technology, and fantasy drives (Alcubierre et al.) that require a handwavium to function - based on our current understanding of such possibilities, that is. The model for the Alcubierre drive simply demonstrates the mathematical possibility of how such a drive could work. It does not demonstrate the feasibility of such a drive. That is something that people will be spending many decades figuring out, I'm sure. Respectfully, I must disagree. This is the reason why... ...ladies and gentlemen of this supposed thread, I have one final thing I want you to consider: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it: that does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with the Universe? Nothing! Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with the Universe! It does not make sense! Look at me: I'm a SF author posting about the Universe, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're reading this thread and deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed thread, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must accept that the Universe makes no sense! Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! And that is why warp drive will never happen.

Do keep in mind that Squad reserves the right to change their mind about anything at any time for any reason. A lot has changed since last year, and the game that we may be getting might not be the game they were talking about back then. Consider this more recent quote:

I completely agree. The navball needs two modes: ADI (ye olde artificial horizon for spaceplanes) and FDAI (ye olde 8-ball for spacecraft), with the ability to choose our reference frames as well. A simple button at either side of the ball would toggle modes and reference frames. I do understand the trepidation of others who are used to the current navball, so I would suggest an option for a "legacy" toggle, so that they can keep their navball. After all, if everyone wins, then everyone wins.

So, a little spoiler alert (as the spoiler tags don't work I'm whiting out the spoiler part) I'm guessing a lot of people haven't gone to the north pole of Kerbin, which would help shed some light about Squad's vision of the game that have been posed in this thread. It does, of course, answer the Kerbal Origin Question, but I think it also would help direct the speculation on what kind of technologies could pop up late in the game. Side note: I really like the hibernation unlocking a maximum time warp idea. The hibernation method has always been my hard SF interplanetary travel method of choice in novels and movies. Squad, however, are likely simply looking for a cutscene/loading scene method of travel by saying "100 days later" or something like that. In any event, it's too early to tell what they're thinking considering they haven't even got resources sorted out nor finished making the basic stock parts.

IMHO, I don't think an Alcubierre drive is practical in KSP because putting a part that weighs 1059 tons next to a 8 ton fuel tank would make the rocket really wobbly. It might be a little less wobbly next to an orange 64 ton tank, but I imagine we'd need at least 1030 struts to keep it controllable, which might cause a little bit of lag.

First of all, I completely agree with everything you have posted. +2 from me for this. Secondly, I've never used docking mode as using RCS for landings is no different than using RCS for docking. Your docking camera suggestion would in fact make docking mode obsolete since tapping V until you get your docking view would solve just about every issue with docking I can think of. I would like to see rovers use the same throttle settings as rockets, and use keys used to shift gears forward or reverse rather than the currently inferior "full throttle or no throttle" setting, as it would make travelling on low gravity planets a lot easier, as well as offroading hijinks much more fun! (as a side note, I personally remap the rover keys and EVA to use my numeric keypad... for obvious reasons) And lastly, I agree in that space should be reserved, though I think there are reasonable uses for shift and control outside of ship throttle.

Personally, IMHO, the revert flight button is fine as it is. The type of person who would "send a rescue mission" is exactly the type of person who wouldn't use it, while those who don't want to deal with the loss of a ship or deal with the loss of a kerbal(s) are the type who would force quit the game and restart it rather than lose that kerbal, and thus the revert option is perfect for them. I don't see how reducing options enhances gameplay, since it's the player's decision that determines if that function is used or not. Now, if it was automatic then I could see the argument, but in this case it isn't. I don't really see how dictating gameflow based on nothing more than speculation and conjecture benefits anyone. Heck, even HarvesteR isn't sure how exactly he's going to implement career mode at the moment. Perhaps the "revert flight" option will cost money or something else we haven't thought of. So why not hold our horses until we actually get a glimpse of what Squad has planned and then revisit the topic?

Now that we can toggle the reaction wheels the rovers are a little less flippy (assuming you haven't remapped your rover keys), but the issue with excessive traction remains, unfortunately.

Yes it is true that HarvesteR is/was thinking of adding FTL as a late game drive*. It was back when he was talking about expansion packs in one of the live streams or that IRC thing that he and Skunky did. There might even be a post or two about it here or on Reddit if you're so inclined to go digging. His idea for interstellar travel wasn't exactly the whooshyomgitsfullofstarsfor20minutes type drive suggested here; IIRC he was thinking more like a jump drive that would likely just use a cut scene to transport the ship. Of course, since the EP blowup he may have changed his mind, so it's really up in the air now. *Caveat: Squad reserves the right to change their mind about anything at any time for any reason.

This would get my vote only if if ifI could strap sepratrons to an office chair for full freestyle office racing.

I'm starting a rumour that the Devs specifically stated that career mode will start with much more primitive parts and buildings: Obviously they'll add more but that's as far as they got before they passed out.* *I swear this is all true, except for the stuff I made up.

Hm. Well put. Your logic is sound and it seems like something that, under extremely low thrust, should be doable. I think though that the problem would lie in the interaction with other SOI as the orbit increases - after all, presumably the goal is to actually go somewhere via ion power - which would lead to inaccuracies between rails and physics once out of time warp, would it not? I've already seen such inaccuracies in map mode, though that doesn't mean I think the problem is completely insurmountable... after all, there's loads of good suggestions by far brighter people than me in chaos_forge's VOI thread, so it may just be my ignorance speaking (my maths are limited to ballistics and anything to do with cars/race trucks) when I talk about inaccuracies and the like. Anyhow, I still think you make a good point, so I'll leave this post on that note.