Tyko

Yep, I agree with that and am also against game-impacting weather. I'm always happy with pretty visuals.

Hmm..I agree it can be worked around. I think your use of the term "annoying" is telling though. Would adding weather substantively improve the game experience or would it just add an annoyance to be time-warped over? If weather is serious enough to be worth adding, it's also likely too serious to launch in. In real life they have strict weather parameters. One of the Mariner missions was stuck in orbit for months due to a freak storm on the Martian surface. Even NASA sort of time-warped - they left the lander in orbit until the storms died down and then commenced with the mission. In the same period a couple of Russian landers - which couldn't delay their re-entry - flew into the storm and were lost.

If the numbers are critical to the game, then there should be a quick way to find them. To @RX2000's point, the maneuver node tells how much DV you need for the maneuver, there's a discontinuity in the user experience when there's no way to see how much DV you have. I'd be really interesting in knowing how many people buy the game and quit playing quickly once they realize they have to either A) keep a calculator handy or B) be forever uncertain of whether or not they have enough fuel to complete their missions...

I feel like this question comes up once a month or so I was just teaching someone how to play KSP last night. Together we built a rocket to carry Jeb to the moon, successfully land him, do a quick EVA and then aerobrake back on Kerbin. The most oft-repeated comment during the 2.5 hour intro session went something like this "this feature isn't included in the base game, but there's a mod that fixes it" Here's a quick rundown on the key items that were missing (just the barebones needs, nothing really fancy or that just makes the game look better) DeltaV readout TWR calculations AP/PE height and time to node shown in normal view Altitude above terrain - seriously, WTH with showing "altitude above sea level" as the only option. How often is that number actually critical to know? Precise Maneuver editing - I started by just using the Node and it's handle's. When I saw him getting frustrated with trying to pull the handles accurately I showed him how to use PM and its keyboard controls.

"Open the service bay doors, HAL"

I'm just exploring asteroids and the thing I'd be most excited for would be to turn them into true Biomes so the full suite of science experiments could be conducted on them. It took at least as much planning and skill to successfully rendezvous with an asteroid as it did to orbit the Mun (maybe land on it) yet the Mun orbit yielded many more science points from many experiments. The efforts of meeting an asteroid could be rewarded better. It might be enough to have all asteroid act as the same Biome type (like midlands craters on the Mun) or maybe each asteroid class could be a Biome - science from small rocks may be different than big rocks? EDIT: I'm guessing this could be modded by adding the right situational trigger to the experiments???

KSP has replaced LEGOs for me. Launching LEGO rockets was getting expensive and upsetting my neighbors to the East

It would have been amusing if the KSP portion portrayed a ship wobbling due to lack of struts. Would have been appropriate for the topic. Still, I too am very intrigued as to why they'd add that clip in.

Are you prepared to wait over a year for your next launch window to another planet because inclement weather prevented you from launching?

NASA's NESC video on frangible parts and shell buckling has a quick shot KSP orange tanks (with lots of struts). Check out 22:06 minutes into the video

I had some whacky flipping behavior with KJR too. My launchers would suddenly veer off-course during launch. removing KJR solved it.

This - clouds would be great. I'm against weather because all it would do is force players to time-warp until a clear day happens, without really changing gameplay.

good point and I'm not sure if it was lift or drag causing the change...let me clarify On a test vehicle descending under two parachutes my descent velocity decreases as I increase parachute spread - a spread of 10 resulted in lower descent speed than a spread of 1

Spread angle matters, but it's the reverse of what I expected - two or more parachutes with a higher spread angle produce more drag. A spread angle of 10 results in more drag from the 2 chutes than a spread angle of 1.

What changes did you make to the Persistence file?

This came up earlier in the thread...'technically' some parts WERE procedurally generated. That differs from the idea that they ARE procedurally generated (for each save)

I'm really excited by PorkJet's engines and the idea that they get better over as tech advances. I'm less enthused with the ongoing need to make everything look like it's used and abused. I get that there's this amorphous back-story that everything was from a junkyard, but I like my rockets a little cleaner and shinier.

Good point, and rovers are fun to drive around in. I was so excited the first time I was able to do an on-target landing I just wanted to share the chance to learn how to do it

My solution was to practice landing accurately. Build a lightweight lander and have a small mothership in orbit for refueling (or just quicksave and reload ). Drop a flag or other target on the ground and practice your landing planning. My current method is to do a de-orbit burn that will result in a flyover of my target at ~5Km. I then drop another node a bit before I'd pass my target and use that node to bring me down on the target. Right before the second burn I make might have to drag that node a bit forward to account for rotation of the moon/planet. Once that second burn is complete you should be dropping on target. The final step is your final deceleration burn. The longer your wait the more accurate your landing will be, so suicide burns are a great idea here.

Correct. There are two parts included and the default settings require that one of those parts be added to your ship to get telemetry. If you switch the setting to "partless", you receive telemetry without the need to attach the part.

Sounds like a great idea. use existing nodes and then write support for CTT. That will give you an audience with people who prefer stock tech tree and with those who like modded trees.

KER comes with two parts. There's a settings options for "partless" which eliminates the need to add these parts to your ship. If you want to make sure you can delete KER and not impact your save, choose "partless"

I had no probs with just a .625 heat shield, the sample container and the parachute. The delivery vehicle detached at about 100Km and the collection pod righted itself with the heatshield down. The return I tried was from Sun orbit - just outside Kerbin SOI - with the pod moving at over 3200m/s when it hit the atmosphere.

I'd consider removing the "partial transmission" option from antennas. Partial Transmission effectively negates any limitations you add regarding power requirements. If you want the balance to be low signal strength = higher power requirements = changes the way you design/fly missions, then forcing players to include enough power to complete the transmission in one shot fits well with that balance.

Would 1.2 autostrutting solve this? clicking on your Kontainer's docking port and choosing "Grandparent" or "Root" should (I think?) connect it firmly to the main craft.