Tyko

I play Science mode and really like early to mid-game challenges, so find ways to make science more interesting and slow it down - 40% science returns Any experiment that relies on physical material can't be transmitted for any value - Mystery Goo, Material Bay, Surface Samples must be returned to gather science. This has really encouraged me to develop more complex sample return missions. Science Labs - a big one... First, I use Life Support, so there's a real cost to staffing and maintaining labs. Any given experiment from a specific biome can only be processed in one lab - I don't carry copies of the same experiment to multiple labs Data to Science conversion rate is dropped from 5:1 down to 1:1 - the best I can do is to double my science return from a given biome, but at the cost of building and maintaining stations. I love stations, so this works really well. I have to do a ScanSat altitude and biome survey before I land anything. Other non-science rules: Always have to have a plan keep Kerbals alive and to bring them home I can fly test launches, but have to decide beforehand if it's a test or the real thing. If it's the real thing I don't revert I use Kerbal Launch Failure set to 10% early and 5% in later game. So every crewed craft has to have an LES of some sort. I don't leave any expendable components in planetary or moon orbits. It either has to be de-orbited or in a Solar orbit.

Mod authors already devote their spare time to supporting the community. Place additional burden of working on yet another distribution system on them will accelerate burn-out. I think mods on Steam is an awful idea...I can just see all the mod forums "when are you putting this on Steam?", "will it be on Steam soon?"...etc etc... And...not to put too fine a point on it, but a huge chunk of popular mods are all run by @linuxgurugamer, so the devs should really be asking him what he wants. If he's not going to support Steam, then it's a moot point in my book.

All you're really doing is creating lots of splinter timelines with no elegant way to merge them back. You'd start off playing with friends on the same timeline, but as soon as any person / group time warps they're in a new splinter timeline. For example. You have a team working on LKO on a space station. Your other team travels to Eve and returns to Kerbin. For the Eve team many months have passed, but for the LKO team it might have only been days. They're now on separate timelines that can't be merged without seriously bending the "time/space continuum". If you let them re-merge then either time really slowed down on Kerbin or the Eve team was using near-instantaneous travel. This might work within the new Missions system where you could define the roles and mission components with a limited scope. I don't see how it would work in a normal open world KSP game though

If MH didn't do well I hope they'll at least consider that maybe it wasn't a case of "DLC = bad" but rather "mission builder wasn't what most players cared about". Also, it would have done better if all the bugs and delays hadn't caused their Steam rating to plummet. I hope the lesson learned would be listen to what the community wants and do a better QA job before releasing...I really love this game, but it's been since March that I've put any real time into it because it's gotten so frustrating.

I've thought about that too...the problem is that KSP stock is already easy enough with current LFO engine ISPs in the 275-350 range. Adding in a set of higher efficiency engines would make the game ridiculously easy. I'd love to see a DLC that was "advanced play" with a scaled up system (maybe 2.5, 3.2 and 5x options) along with LH2 engines, converting nuclear engines to LH2 and adding a few more nuclear engines. This would be something I'd really love. Currently scaling the system takes at least 4 mods, all of which have to be updated and working together well.

That'd be really cool...the three colors I primarily use are Red & Green for navigation lights and White for general lighting.

I'm not citing anyone. I formulated my opinion based on these points: I've read many times on the forums that most people don't even leave the Kerbin local system. for most trips to Mun / Minmus LS would be essentially a handwave anyway. USI-LS gives a 15 day grace period for Supplies which allows time for most Mun / Minmus missions without even bothering with Supplies. I'm not sure that a Stock system would have a grace period, but I expect it wouldn't be sudden death, that's not aligned with how the game runs now. The game as it stands now has a really steep learning curve. Adding more complexity will only scare new people away. So you'd likely have to make it an advanced "hard level" option, but then many players likely won't ever go there. The same player type that says "I don't need DV because I'm having fun building and launching rockets by trial and error" isn't likely to want the added burden of math calculations for LS. This is Harvestr's original game play model and it doesn't seem like Squad has deviated far from it because they still don't include DV Another big group that primarily builds terrestrial planes, boats, etc won't care In summary, I don't think it would be used by casual players and a system that's simplified enough to "try" to be usable by casual players won't satisfy people who want the bigger challenge offered by the mods. So you're stuck with a, IMHO, relatively narrow window between those two groups.

Both look really nice! How well does KSOS play with 1.4.x? I see they've revivified it and are in the bug-squashing process now.

Only item 2 is entirely valid. The game is, by definition, feature complete when the devs say it is. There really is no "reasonable expectation" in Feature Complete. Each of us have different expectations and if you applied your logic then they would have to satisfy all of our reasonable expectations. What your inclusion of point 1 is really saying is you want them to make the game you want and that's not how Feature Complete works. Life Support - would be nice, but it's not required to make the game feature complete and many / most people wouldn't use it anyway. It's an advanced feature that makes the game harder and the game is already hard enough for beginners. If they added LS it would likely be so dumbed down that those of us that enjoy the added complexity would keep using the mods. Personally, I'd be fine with Stock implementation of USI-LS, but again, that's what I consider reasonable and I understand that others will have very different opinions. Late Game structure/balance/direction - I would consider a balance pass of the entire game a necessity. I think it's very "reasonable" that the various parts of the game are balanced against each other. I won't consider the game complete until they've gone through all 5+ years of legacy content and brought it all to a consistent standard. Multiplayer - IIRC this was mentioned in the pre-release phase as something that they wanted to explore. This is way different than saying "MP is on our roadmap". And back to point 2 above - if they devs have decided not to add MP, then it's not a feature that needs to be completed. Features plans get cut all the time with products. It's part of the natural design process to lay out a large set of goals and then pare them back to a final feature set. I wish they'd quit devoting time to features I don't care about - Mission Planner and Steam Integration were a waste of their time IMHO. I realize others might disagree and that's why the whole idea of "reasonably expect" doesn't really work. TL:DR - it's feature complete when Squad says it is, period

I think this is the first time I've seen a staff member comment on the "no DV" question...Can you please explain Squad's reason / position on continuing to leave DV out?

This is probable the best MP idea I've seen on here because time warp can still be used. Since all participants are working on the same mission it's really easy for the participants to agree to a time warp. Far different from having multiple players working different missions simultaneously

Looks great, as always Which mods are those solar panels and the twin-bell engine on the transfer stage from?

I tested it yesterday and it looks like it's working

That may be the single worst idea I've ever read on this forum I sure hope you were joking...

Yep, Buran actually had 2 jet engines originally and they'd tested 4 engine configurations as well. IIRC the big problem was protecting those engines during re-entry.

Were you using Autostruts? They seemed to be the problem in my case of station misalignment.

cool idea! Would be interesting if you could leverage your delivery system to create orders that need to be delivered to bases and stations you've built. You'd get the interest of people who primarily launch things into space and you'd be giving stations and bases more purpose / reasons to visit them - something sadly lacking right now.

Another option is to use Better Burn Time. It presents a small display next to the Navball that gives you countdown clocks for maneuver nodes, rendezvous and landing - it switches automatically depending on your situation. I use it and have found that the estimated times are very conservative giving you lots of room for error.

Thanks for the advice! Turns out it was an autostrut issue. I'd seen it happen before but only occasionally. Not sure if something changed with 1.4.x, but it happened every time. Restarting the game didn't help. Scene changes didn't help and even slight changes to the design didn't help. Last night I tested about a dozen variations including things like removing the docking ports. It still happened. Lesson learned - I install Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and quit using autostruts.

Hi all, wondering if anyone knows what causes this issue. I launched this station, went to the Tracking Station then reloaded the space station. Now the section with the solar panels attached is off at a whacky angle. The docking port Jr on the front of the orbiter to the left is also at an angle too. None of those parts are clipped. Everything was just attached as normal, so I don't think it's a clipping issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've seen it occasionally for years, but usually reloading fixes it. In this case it's persistent.

They would both work, but yea...you want to slow down as close to the ground as possible because otherwise you're going to start accelerating due to gravity and have to spend more fuel to slow down a second time. This is the idea of a suicide burn. coming to a hover closer to the ground means you have less distance to accelerate again.

If you're asking what a real-world Lagrange point is it might be easier to just Google it than ask another forum user to type up something that's already explained at length on wikipedia and other places :/

Just wondering....If you're planning a slingshot anyway, wouldn't it be even better to start at your Mun station, plot a drop deep into Kerbin's gravity well just above 70km, and then burn your transfer at Kerbin PE?

This is how the Apollo missions did precision landings. you lose some DV over a suicide burn, but especially on minmus it's a very small loss. I'd suggest practicing on Minmus. Come to a hover a kilometer up and then nudge your ship til you've over your target and drop down.

I can't answer because there's not an option that says "If it worked right it'd be worth the money"