blorgon

I literally had no other option.

Wanted to make a shorter video than usual, so I didn't show the script working for any TWR above 2. It requires a tiny tweak if your TWR is 1 < TWR < 2. And I'm pretty sure that if your TWR were < 1, it might still work, since having to start the burn so early would likely burn enough fuel to bring it above 1. Haven't tested that yet.

Hmm. Good idea. I tried it out on Tylo and Gilly for the two extremes, and I also tried it out with my lander at 3% thrust limited and they all worked perfectly. Even on Gilly—didn't even bounce. I'm gonna go try out Kerbin, Eve, and Laythe, and then I'll see how it performs when TWR = 1.

Had a major breakthrough in the kOS hoverslam script I've been working on for three days. I wanted to write one from scratch. Turns out I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Three days of struggling, and then BAM. I figured it out. Originally I had been trying to write a deorbit+hoverslam program but that proved to be way over my head, so I settled for a vertical hoverslam. I'm going to be making a video tomorrow, and a reddit post. Here's the kicker: it's a single line of code, and it does perfect hoverslams on any body (that I've tried so far, haven't tried atmospheric bodies yet).

Spent about 8 hours on and off throughout the day tweaking my any-rocket kOS launch script. I'm probably going to make a thread about it because I've put a LOT of work into making it nearly 100% adaptable, and I've come up with what I think are some pretty neat solutions.

See, most people probably already have most of these mods anyway, so that's not a big deal. But last I checked, the ALCOR and ASET stuff is scattered all over the internet and is a total pain to track down. That's what I want to include. As far as having people modify parts themselves, I feel like that would be a major deterrent for anybody thinking of trying the craft out. Firstly, nobody is going to want to do that, because it'd be a pain. Secondly, the part in question is from an older version of the mod, and it's a single part. Having people download an old mod just to try to find the part themselves, and then edit the .cfg is way more work than somebody should have to do just to be able to try a craft out. I've reached out to the author of the mod, so we'll see. But if it's a no-go, then I'm probably not going to bother, because I doubt people will want to go through all those steps.

lol. Yeah, I started to write a real reply, then I realized what had happened. Moar coffee for me, too.

Looks like you've posted in the wrong thread! Maybe you were meaning to post your own thread?

I can definitely see KSP being sequel-able. Some day in the near future, we're probably going to get to a point where the limitations that Unity places on the game will outweigh the benefits of continuing to use it. I think at that point—or honestly, even now—it'd be easier to build a brand new game from scratch in a custom, dedicated engine than it would be to try to port it to a new engine while also overhauling it. I know it's hard to imagine multiple installations (in the sense of a series of things, not .exe's), since the game just updates here and there to add new things, and we're all just used to that cycle. It's hard to imagine that there'd ever be a last update. But I can definitely see a point in the future where a brand new KSP would make more sense, and frankly, I'd welcome it. I really honestly would be happy with a "next-gen" style of sequel, where almost all of KSP as it currently exists is a part of the new game, but with massive overhauls to everything and lots of new additions. I'm thinking of the kind of jump in quality and power like upgrading from PS2 straight to PS4. Whether that will happen is certainly moot, but isn't really in the scope of this thread. I prefer to keep these kinds of things purely hypothetical.

Whaaaa? I swear I just checked their profile, like... yesterday... and saw cobwebs. Maybe I was just so used to seeing it inactive, I didn't even notice they'd been online. Well I guess that makes things easier... #embarrassed

I use some modified FASA engines (removed the reflection plugins, so as to make them compatible with 1.1.2), a modified part from an old version of Near Future Construction (as well as new versions), NF Electrical, NF Solar, kOS, RPM, ASET and ALCOR props and parts, and the Mk1-2 IVA overhaul by @alexustas, who hasn't been on the forum in months other than a few random posts at the beginning of May. The FASA engines, old NF part, and Alexustas' mods are the things I was thinking of including in the download since the proper versions are either hard to find, or were modified specifically for this craft by me. A lot of the links in alexustas' threads are dead, and I didn't want to send any potential users of my craft on a wild goose chase having to find all the mods and piece them together correctly. There's also the Mk1-2 overhauled IVA that isn't even available anymore except in Chaka Monkey's mod pack, but again, I didn't want to force the user to download that just for the Mk1-2. I'll hold off on releasing the craft until after I've messaged to mod authors, but again, I'm not sure what to do about alexustas.

UGH THAT'S SO MUCH WORK On a more serious note, some of the authors haven't been active here for a long time. What should I do in that case?

So, I want to show off a craft I built of which I'm particularly proud. It requires mods, and some modded parts from mods. I have a folder with the required mods and modded parts, along with the craft file and a READ ME. I'm wondering what the ethics are of including the necessary mods with the craft file. Can I do this, or is it generally frowned upon? I feel like it might be a bit of a deterrent for some people if they know they'll have to install 5 or 10 mods (depending on how many, if any, they're missing). And of course, there are parts from mods that I've modified myself to fit the project. These are very minor modifications, but they are modifications of other mod authors' work. They're still properly credited in the .cfgs, but I'm just a little unsure of how best to go about releasing the craft without upsetting said authors. Also, as an aside, is there anyway we could get a separate exchange subthread specifically dedicated to modded crafts? There's a sticky thread, but nobody uses it and it's massively outdated, and the subthread is almost completely full of stock crafts. I don't really want to get buried. I get that most people probably prefer to stick to stock crafts to avoid the very issues I'm writing this post about, but I feel like maybe more modded crafts would make it to the exchange if there was some better documentation on how best to approach sharing them. Forgive me if I'm missing something somewhere in the forum where this has been discussed!

My brother and I used to design a lot of crafts and come up with missions and big plans for colonies and space stations. We would build something and send the craft file over to whoever was playing on a common save file that we also shared. It got extremely tedious though. I would absolutely love being able to play with him real time. Mostly stuff like building colonies, and science missions where one of us could be in the lab doing experiments and the other could be piloting. We also have really wanted to be able to freely move in IVA. I really think that by the time a KSP 2 would even be possible, somebody will have worked out a way to do multiplayer in a very elegant way.

Honestly, this is something I wish more modders did themselves, adding their mods to their own custom advanced mode tabs like some of them do. But yeah, there's plenty of room for more default tabs. And Utility is definitely a big offender. I didn't really want to talk about it here too much since it's been discussed plenty of times already and the consensus is pretty much set in stone on that one. I'd rather talk more about engine categories, since that doesn't seem to come up as often.

Well, firstly, I used the word 'probably'. I figured anybody with decent reading comprehension would understand it to mean that I'm saying that yours is more than likely an edge case, and not applicable to most users. It's speculation, but it's also an educated guess. As for 'crippling', I don't know if you didn't bother reading my reply, you're looking to argue with somebody, or you just don't know what that word means, but there's nothing about my suggestion that would limit your ability to build whatever you want. All I'm suggesting is a cleaner, tidier UI.

Replying to your edit note. I definitely don't need the UI to do any hand holding, I simply prefer clean, uncluttered workspaces. Greyed out options shouldn't be unplaceable, like radial parts when starting a new craft, but just sort of out of the way. As far as your 'illogical' craft building techniques, I don't think that's a fair argument for something 99% of other players probably wouldn't have an issue with.

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you mean here. Are you saying that engine categorization won't happen because it'd mean they'd have to do categorization for landing legs and electrical too, or are you saying that there aren't enough engines to justify categorizing them? I'd say there are enough stock engines to justify splitting them up between upper/vacuum ideal engines, and lifter/booster ideal engines. I'd also argue that there are enough batteries, fuel cells, RTGs, and solar panels to justify an electrical category, and enough landing legs and landing gears to justify their own category too.

For those of us who like organization, it'd be nice if there were actually two (or even three, I'll get to that in a second), engine part tabs in the default part list. Apart from the obvious additional tabs that most of us want, like dedicated electrical, I'd love if the engines were separated out into lifters and upper stage engines, and a possible third tab entirely dedicated to solid fuel boosters. I'm aware of the mod that does this (although I haven't used it, and I'm not sure if it's possible to replace stock tabs with it, or only add new subcategory tabs)—this is more of a suggestion for the stock game to implement. I was also thinking it'd be nice if certain engine types would grey out or otherwise indicate that they are not usable on a given stage, like for instance, if you place a xenon tank on your satellite, all but ion engines would be greyed out. Obviously in stock, this isn't really necessary as there's only one ion engine, but when we have mods that add engines of those types, being able to filter out engines that take a specific fuel would be nice. Again, none of this is needed, these are just things I can think of that would improve the workflow of craft design. I think probably the best application for this kind of filtering would be with RSS/RO, where there are what looks like dozens of fuel types and combinations. I haven't actually installed RSS/RO yet, so I'm not sure how fuel type selection is implemented. Just thinking out loud here, I guess.

Banned for reentering.

Came here to say exactly this. Easter eggs are not a reason to visit a place. And for those talking about fixing bugs, this thread is about the "general direction" of the game development. If bug fixing is the general direction the game is headed, then that's pretty bleak. Whenever I think about, or answer these kinds of questions, I assume that bugfixing is something that will always be there by default.

Not sure why you're getting defensive. I posted in the subreddit about a month ago, and two of the devs specifically said it was an oft-requested and that they'd discussed it several times, which is why I mentioned it here. It's obviously a novelty though, so I don't expect it to get much attention, and I'm totally fine with that. More wishful thinking than anything, but by no means am I complaining about it not being a feature.

Actually, what I really want to do is slice that audio up into smaller clips, and use kOS to play the each clip during the countdown at the right times. I want to kOS to slowly gimbal the engines just before startup like they did too, turn on and off SAS and some other random flight systems 'checks', and I'd like to build a better sound suppression system. All just to make a better launch video. But unfortunately, right now kOS doesn't allow for custom audio clips. Supposedly it's an oft-requested feature, so hopefuly they'll give in and implement it soon. Also, sorry I never saw your reply till just now.

I use them as emergency power. I learned long ago that relying on any one system in KSP is a fatal mistake. There are just too many bugs and weird physics quirks to rely on just one source of power. I keep them off until my EC is terrifyingly low. This only ever happens when I'm out around Jool, or my solar panels broke off because I looked at them wrong. And, of course, anything beyond Jool, I just take fuel cells for manned craft (I roleplay and minimize the use of RTGs around crew), as the power they generate no longer justifies the weight of bringing them along.

Fuel cells + panels for all manned craft. RTGs for probes, autonomous rovers, and satellies.