Codraroll

Squad is on vacation for another week, so I don't even think we'll have one next week either. But the week after that, we ought to get something.

Welcome to the Internet. It's a little daunting for beginners to figure out exactly how to communicate here, and what you can reasonably expect as an answer when you ask questions. This is pretty much universal for all forums, and KSP is no exception. You have jumped into a bit of a beginner's mistake, asking for something akin to a full rework of the game, which usually would take hundreds if not thousands of work-hours, and may actually be more than what is even possible to mod given the constraints of the game architecture. What you ask is far beyond what anybody would reasonably consider doing in KSP. The empty "I'm leaving" threat is also something I've seen way too many times from new users (and I've got less than a decade of forum experience). It never works. Ever. I've seen respected forum users with thousands of posts and years of experience make absolute asses of themselves, embarrassing themselves and others by throwing a childish tantrum and leaving. It's no dignified way to go. Staying in the thread and continuing the same behaviour is somehow even worse, but newcomers are usually excused. So yeah, that's the Internet lesson from me today. Please stick around, and try to observe how people are behaving. Suggestions are fine, wish lists are OK enough, but you should know what falls within the limits of feasibility and plausibility. Stray too far outside those, and you will probably be met with some ridicule. It's fine, we've all been there at some point.

My little suggestion... a Media Center or something at the KSC. A place to tell the "Kerbal Public" what goals you are aiming for, which would influence the contracts you receive and the payout you get for them. Players could build something of a grand contract for themselves to follow, such as "We're going for the Mun". Contracts (like we know them today) would then appear like "Science temperature data from the Mun's East Crater" or "Plant flag on the Mun". After announcing your strategy, the first Mun landing would pay you a lot more than it otherwise would in terms of Science, Funds and Reputation, while other contracts paid comparably less. Failure to deliver on your promises would also be costly. The Media Center could also present grand strategies to you. For instance something like "After the blockbuster move The Dresian became a box office hit, public interest in Dres is soaring. Announcing a plan to send Kerbals to Dres would be very profitable right now." And so you'd be given a large upfront sum, and a set of Dres-related sub-contracts. Just a little something to create "story arcs" in Career mode, with a goal to aim for. As for making Contracts more compelling, perhaps they could offer more than just Funds, Science and Rep? Say... extra experience for Kerbonauts on mission, permanently making some parts cheaper, or unlocking special parts? How cool would it be if Rockomax offered you their RE-I5B "Skipper Mk II" engine if you planted their flag on the Mun? Or have Kerbodyne send you a counter-offer, promising you a better version of one of their parts? Mutually exclusive contracts could have some potential, I think. I'd also like the career to involve a possibility of establishing Space Centers on other planets, but I guess that's a story for another thread...

Adjustable height wheels would be really nice. Rover-side-mounted wheel rigs that could be raised and lowered. It would revolutionize planetary base building. Whether you mount the wheels directly on the base's modules, or make a little tow truck, the ability to adjust the relative height of the various docking ports would be wonderful. Rover construction in general needs a little love, I think. A dedicated rover cockpit would be really nice. As would a deployable rover platform. If I recall correctly, Spirit and Opportunity were put down on Mars using a contraption that looked like a tetrahedral bouncy casle. Something like that for Kerbal rovers would be a nice supplement to the good ol' suicide burn.

The MPL is not only OP, it's OPTIONAL. It can also be config'd and slidered and what-have-you-not, to tweak it into working almost the way you want it. If you don't want it at all, nobody's forcing anybody to use it. I consider it a neat little option for my playthroughs, but if I ever feel it removes the challenge, I remove it. It's not a very difficult thing. Perhaps if the first rocket engine you unlocked also was the most fuel-efficient, had the highest thrust and never broke upon impact, and it was the only option available if you wanted to progress, it would be a playthrough-ruining thing. But the MPL comes mid- to late-game, and can be skipped entirely without any repercussions.

Before I start my wish list, I think I should try to answer the question of the OP: The impression I've got: Most players rarely if ever go beyond Minmus. The game gets a lot harder and more punishing when you aim for stuff outside Kerbin's SOI. You need more complicated ships, more complicated maneuvers, and the expeditions take an awfully long time to prepare for and execute. In-game, you might have to fast-forward months or even years to hit a suitable launch window. And if you screw up, you might find several hours of work gone down the drain. Packed too little fuel? Watch your ship destined to drift around the Sun forever, or slam hard into the planet as you try to land on it. Or maybe you find you can't get to orbit, much less back to Kerbin, after a successful landing. I thought I'd mastered cismunar travel pretty well before I set off for Duna, but ended up screwing up in a lot of different ways. The lander landed like a brick and took off like a drunk pigeon. The mother ship needed to burn for nearly 20 minutes before achieving orbit around Duna, at which point it had 26 units of fuel left. I had to spend another hours-long play session assembling a rescue craft in Kerbin orbit, fuelling it and sending it off to Duna to pick up the crew and their Science, and get them back to Kerbin. The design decisions you make very early on will come back to bite you several hours into your mission, when you have no way to fix them. That makes the challenge quite daunting for many players. The difficulty of going far away in stock KSP was what made me seek out mods. It may make some people crack their knuckles and whisper "let's go for it", but many others feel the game is asking too much of them and give up. There's something psychological about leaving Kerbin's influence, with no way to know if you'll return. Besides, the in-game reward for going to the outer planets is slim at best. You can fill the tech tree by biome-hopping on the Mun and Minmus, and while it could be fun to challenge oneself with missions further out, the risk-to-reward ratio is far too high for many people to try. You need a special kind of dedication and desire for challenge to go there. As such, stock KSP is currently at its best when you go on lightweight expeditions to the Mun or Minmus. Going further is difficult and time-consuming, especially if you base your missions on ships assembled in orbit. For most casual players, Duna is the ultimate frontier, Dres a challenge for the daring, and Jool and beyond simply too much hassle. There's no strict need to add planets beyond Eeloo yet, since any player skilled enough to go there is probably into KSP enough to find a planet mod to play with. What stock KSP needs at the moment isn't more planets. It's incentives to explore those we already have, and stepping stones to go there. I'd love to see an option to add more Space Centers somewhere. If you could, say, establish a proper spaceport on Duna, and use that one as a base for Dres missions, I'd be all over it. There could be a third spaceport on Laythe, unlocked after you brought a certain amount of supplies (or hauled the right parts) there. Add one to Moho too, for good measure. Just make parts and fuel a lot more expensive the further you go from Kerbin, with building upgrades primarily focused on making parts cheaper. If there is a mod for this, I'd like to hear about it. Anyway, perhaps I rather should propose something more lightweight, less invasive and possibly more feasible: Landmarks. We're halfway there already, with the Mun having its canyon and the Mohole on Moho, plus the various Easter Eggs, but it would be awesome if they expanded the concept and gave it more of a focus. A mighty, narrow valley somewhere on the Joolian moons. Proper fjords on Laythe, Eve or even Kerbin. A bright spot on Dres, like the one on Ceres. A non-polar glacier on Duna. A few places, scattered about the Kerbol system, specifically designed to look spectacular, to be a destination for explorers. Each its own biome, with well-paying contracts asking you to go there. The fanbase has many challenges for experienced players, but the game should give some to inexperienced ones too. I'm not asking anybody to change the game to make hard things "too easy". Just add a few things to make it more convenient.

Thanks for the warm welcome! The problem isn't seeing that there is a new version out - I just didn't found any instructions on how to apply the new versions. Should I download and replace files, is there a "subscribe" feature akin to the Steam Workshop somewhere, or does Module Manager take care of it all?

Hello everybody! After having my first try of modded KSP the other day, and encountering an issue, I figured there was no reason not to sign up for these forums any more. I've been following the devnotes for a while now, and read the occasional mission report, but I've never really felt like signing up until now. Best thing is, the issue I encountered was fixed before I came here, but I decided to sign up and give the mod author my thanks anyway. So now I'm just paddlin' around, trying to get a hang of things, and contemplating which addons to try out and which I really should have (and how they work - I got them installed somehow, but got no idea how to keep them updated, or whether I need to start a new save if I want to try new addons). ModuleManager seems to be referred to everywhere, and it might have been what fixed my issue, but I have no idea what it actually does. Magic, I suppose. About me, I'm an engineering student from Norway, a fan of sandbox games and notorious procrastinator. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this community, and where this wonderful game will go in the future. Thanks for letting me in!

Hello everybody! This post was originally intended to be a newbish plea for help. I was experiencing the same issue as DokBalu above, albeit with the 1.25 m tanks. Z-fighting, textures flickering, it looked like a mess, and I had no idea how to fix it (or even whether this mod was causing the issue). I'm very new to modded KSP, I just binge-installed my first mods two days ago. But then a fix was published, and I installed Firespitter since it was mentioned in this thread, and now the issue is resolved and the game looks beautiful again. So instead of the plea for help, have my deepest thanks for making - and maintaining - these great mods, NecroBones! I hereby dedicate my first post to you.