karolus10

Actually there is nothing to worry about new parts balance as stock parts aren't yet balanced in the first place... enjoy stock OP parts or don't use them if you feel unchallenged .

Maybe I'm bit old fashion but I still respect FL-T400 as basic fuel tank "unit" - most of pre-ARM stack fuel tanks are pretty much up-sized version of it, It has same dry mass fraction and any larger tank fit rounded number of it, If I recall correctly (yet not shure) Orange tank hold inside 32x FL-T400 tank.

I personally like the buff of ion engine, I would not mind having stock 1 meter version as well . Ions are good with better thrust as long as their energy consumption is on legitimate levels... Electric propulsion is all about getting enough power to run them. From other hand energy requirements and output of all stock parts need some serious balancing IMHO... command pods and probes (stack guidance units also they need lager batteries than regular probes) should need more energy to run them making batteries and power generation parts (also we could use of having APU burning RCS fuel and fuel cells) more important.

For me ARM update will not be remembered because of asteroids nor sls style parts, but as "wobble bane"... exagerated wobble of any 2.5m rocket without struts on every connection was a number 1 issue making use of ridiculus amounts of ductape a necesity for most of 2.5m rockets.

If you are looking for more challange You can just not use saves and revert flight option, same effect. EDIT_1: I wonder when Jeb will find rest of his clones hidden in the basement of KSC.

Stuff like deadly reentry, arcade/ (more) realistic aerodynamics, wind, weather, radio communications and delays or crew need to breathe and eat are perfect examples of features that ability to turn it ON and OFF decide about game difficulty level. Adding more complex set of game mechanics, flight instruments and editor/flight-planning tools is a good and desirable thing (It's adding more depth to late game) until you aren't forced to use them all to achieve anything in game - You can still slap few parts together and "go for it", but you will discover and use more and more of the game capabilities and tools as You progress (i.e. get some skill and knowledge) and look for another challenge. Also I believe that after game is pretty much finished it will receive more developed tutorial and training scenarios, making entry even more painless and giving more tools for the community to create complete missions and scenarios.

I think that it would be nice to see mod with old demo part set scaled down to half meter probe parts and play with them like with RC rocket models... but I don't see it really for stock game.

Interesting fact is that SRB's with same fuel and diameter but different length will had equal burn time (thrust limiter would be very useful for longer ones sometimes) and thrust increasing with length.

Conservation of rotation when on-rails could be realistic and very useful for centrifuges (spinning craft for artificial gravity) or for tidal lock (ship rotate slowly so it's always facing ground the same way). from other hand I think that many people will like to had "kill rotation" button in debug menu as this timewarp rotation bug is often exploited to easily deal with spacecrafts that started to spin out of control...

You can use landing gear around the craft to add extra support to the vehicle, they had suspension so they can adjust to asteroid shape... Also if one claw aren't enough you can always use more .

Flag at half mast could be ok in campaign mode, but I doubt that anybody would notice as flag aren't exposed much to player's view, so it's rather an eye-candy. Fallen cosmonauts could be mentioned separately in astronaut complex, when crew training, status, and missions statistics (how many missions each kerbal flown, Time spend in space, other bodies surface and EVA's, total distance traveled, medals, injuries and so on) would be implemented. In sandbox mode Kerbals are pretty much expendable cannon fodder.

I'm afraid that this thread is slowly falling towards it's doom... who else had detected killer asteroid on collision course with kerbin ?

One simple question for the author, did you ever tried to implement a telescopic sections for the arm ?

By the way, You guys can post links to other reviews and articles about KSP when they came out, Happy hunting !

Kerbal space program: Play it once and Hollywood physics aren't fun anymore.

While I agree with this 100%, what I don't agree with is that that ascent profile has anything to do with the stock aerodynamics model. I start my gravity turn very slightly at about 5-7km, and slowly bring it down to 45 degrees as my apoapsis reaches 20km. When my apoapsis is at 30km I'm at 30 degrees (I even refer to this profile as "30 at 30") and when it hits 50km I go to 0 degrees and keep it there. My circularization burn is almost always 5-10 seconds. I like to use nav-ball to estimate time when gravity turn should start, I'm mostly starting turn to 60* just before yellow pro-grade indicator reach it in orbital speed mode so you meet with pro-grade marker at 60* mark... from my observation this allow you to simple gauge if you are climbing fast enough to start gravity turn... maybe it's not the ultimate solution for perfect turn but it's working well and even beginner can get good results . Also I tend to fly into low orbit (more or less as minor corrections may be needed) in a single burn, without coasting to apoapsis, If You gain enough horizontal velocity Your upper stage doesn't need a lot of thrust (1-0.5G of acceleration) to complete the job.

KSP paradox: Enjoying the fireworks while everything went horribly wrong... this made trial&error learning fun instead being frustrating. EDIT_1: Personally I didn't used asparagus staging as most heavy stuff I had launched needed only single core with 2 mainsails in the first stage. If one mainsail aren't enought just add one more... right ? EDIT_2: I also think that larger parts won't stop people from building "Asparagus" (I hate this name) rockets, it would just create bigger versions of them.

I'm playing the stock game from long time, and trying various mods on second installment but I still use NavyFish docking indicator (I would be glad to see Navball showing speeds bellow 0.1m/s instead freaking out) and sometimes one of maneuver nodes enhancements. I'm not fan of "instant" auto pilot programs but I think that we need Proper, precise flight instruments (as well as finished flight planning) in stock game as well as simple programmable SAS, so you can adjust rotation speed limit, lock certain axis and be able to enter SAS target for each locked axis (Pitch, Yaw, Roll, values). For other automation I would prefer having some way of simple command line/script automation that could be used to send very basic programs to probes as well as being improvement of action groups (like making timed sequences or custom action groups/programs visible and triggered from staging list). Making flight computer programmable in limited way sound better for me than mech-jeb as it would be versatile and would require player (or copy-pasting best command files from forums, lol) to automate some actions in same way like when designing rocket itself (+ educational value and satisfaction when everything will execute as planned). From other hand I'm very doubtful that such feature would ever make it's way into a game. I'm not very worried about planets looks and stock parts content until developers will focus on improving core features and mechanics so you cannot call any of them as being merely placeholder.

It is on staging list as an SRB icon, you can hover over staging icons to highlight parts they represent. After adding decoupler module both decoupler and rocket is triggered when activated from staging list so you can place it at the later stage and forget about getting rid of tower at the right time. To use tower for emergency purposes you had to use action groups, I believe it may be counter-intuitive for new players when you try use staging for triggering LES and it's just fly away... from other hand it's a desired behavior unless it's an emergency.

I never thought I will do it but... thumbs up. Never too few articles about KSP .

I think that it's more about icredible buoyancy of parts attached to asteroid, if you "unclaw" all probes it will drown like rock in the water.

I think that it won't matter much as stock parts aren't really balanced for now - in real life rocket engines are a very lightweight compared to it's trust and rest of the rocket ,but changing engines is only a part of the solution as it's very important to balance dry weight of fuel tanks and density (and bi-propellant mixture proportions) of fuel itself as they are largest fraction of the rocket mass... Other important thing would be changing fuel tank capacity units into liters or square meters (as well as displaying mass of the propellant inside as volume is good for defining fuel tanks capacity but mass of propellant in tank matter more during mission), so tank size can be calculated properly and give good point of reference for modding. Also important for engines balancing is that it's thrust is changing with air pressure (atmospheric curve in KSP) but for now thrust is constant and fuel consumption is changing with specific impulse (and it should be opposite). This causing vacuum upper stage engines with low sea level ISP to consume much more fuel instead having significantly reduced trust caused by nozzle underexpansion and first stage engines thrust won't decrease from exhaust over-expanding in upper atmosphere. Better modeling of engine and nozzle mechanics (nozzle expansion and thrust changing with ambient pressure) would made more realistic (upper stage engines don't work well in low atmosphere and vice versa) engines and made nozzle extensions and plug nozzles (AKA areospike) useful and working as intended. EDIT_1: I would say that new engines ISP are bit too generous when compared to older stock parts. EDIT_2: I could disagree, Mainsails in quad configuration are creating real monster, nearly twice more powerful than stock SLS cluster part. From other hand mainsails are much heavier... mass of old engines is too big and TWR too small :/.

Welcome, fellow players. As you may know, our new LES tower from ARM update has no option of safe ejection without adding a decoupler or stacking it on top of docking port, if you want now escape tower with integrated decoupler, You may fix it quickly by adding few lines to escape tower part configuration file before SRB module: MODULE { name = ModuleDecouple ejectionForce = 500 explosiveNodeID = bottom } File ready to download and replace (for lazy people). This little change is adding decoupler into the part so any additional decouplers aren't necessary to eject tower and tower will be ejected by default if activated from staging list (you cannot use it to abort without action group). Have a nice day !

Controlled reentry is not possible at the moment as blunt bodies (hull, heat shield, and so on) doesn't generate lift, without this it's only uncontrolled areobreaking.

There wasn't any "delay" as there wasn't any release date in the first place... Dev's don't post any date as you don't know how much time it will exactly take and rushing dates was never beneficial for players as if it's out earlier than "when it's done", it means that you ask for incomplete (buggy) update that may bring more issues than joy. I really don't see a problem with all this hype and advertising new update, it's coming soon - not now, not tomorrow but it will come soon and Anyone can wait for a while as we waited last few months . This game is still selling (and will be) and any way to bring new and old players into game and forums is the good one !