CobraA1

I'd definitely create some checklists. Doesn't have to be super-detailed or anything. Mostly just stuff you often forget.

By default, 3D graphics don't do barrel distortions. Hence nearly all games are purely based on perspective, with no barrel distortion. In the early days of 3D graphics it would be nearly impossible to do in real time. Drawing straight edges is super-easy, and takes very little processing power. However, a barrel distortion means you have to draw curved lines, and that was prohibitively expensive until recently. Besides, the distortion is something that is almost always subtle, so it is considered a low priority anyways. With today's graphics cards, you could do the barrel distortion using shaders, but it is extra work.

That may take a bit of engineering effort (can mods be unloaded reliably?), but would definitely be a cool feature. If possible, it would be nice to at least be warned if a savegame file is going to be incompatible.

That's definitely true. If you wait too long to make a release, players start to lose interest. Some will even complain about it. It's always a big balancing act between being timely and being stable.

Okay, I'm a bit bummed out. Because it appears some of my ships have been deleted, due to incompatibilities with some of my mods. What happened is that I'm on vacation, and I wanted KSP to be available on my gaming laptop. So I moved my saves over, but didn't do a good enough job of moving the mods over. I exported CKAN's config file and imported it to my laptop. BUT - the "Surface Mounted Stock-Alike Lights" mod apparently changed hands, and didn't get moved over to my laptop, because the old version of the mod wasn't in the CKAN database. So when I loaded the game, it conveniently deleted most of my space program. All because of a cosmetic mod. That really sucks. I would really like a better way of handling this. Perhaps the game can do a pre-loading check on the savegame and provide me with the opportunity to back out? Or perhaps hide the spacecraft until the user has the right mods installed? Anything is better than this :(.

Created brand new Duna craft on a relatively new save. Didn't think I had a lot of fuel, so tried to land on a mountain. Landed on the side of the mountain, and vehicle started slipping at about 1.1 m/s. Looked down, and it'll be slipping for a good hour or so? Didn't want to wait for it, so no soil samples or flags planted today . While MechJeb was keeping the craft stable, did all of the science I could. The ascent autopilot for MechJeb apparently won't work on a hill while slipping. Won't work as you take off, either. So I did it manually. Not a good ascent - nearly vertical. Was able to make it to orbit. Calculated what it would take to get back home. Nope. Even 20 years out, not enough fuel. Worse yet, I had forgotten the antenna, so I couldn't even complete the mission. So I had to create a new craft to perform a rescue. Since the old craft could land and take off from Duna successfully, I figured that if I kept the landing craft and made a few modifications, the rescue craft could make it all the way there and back. Cut out all of the science stuff, since this was a rescue ship. Made the landing craft 2-way symmetrical instead of 3-way, and switched it to engines that were efficient in space. Put in the antenna (although I didn't use it). A few other minor modifications as well. It was now a pure space rescue vessel. Went out with MechJeb piloting the rescue ship. Pretty uneventful, but the original craft was on a pretty steep orbit. Had the pilot gather all of the data from the original craft and board the rescue craft. Had to boost the orbit up to 600+ km so I could time accelerate until I had an optimal window. MechJeb was bugged out for the interplanetary transfer, so I did it manually. The return trip was at an odd angle, so I was approaching Kerbin essentially from the south, but it worked! Heat shield held up, mission was a success, and I finally got a lot more science after a long science drought . I think the original craft could actually make the entire round trip, I had just wasted a lot of fuel with the takeoff from Duna. That said, the next craft to go there will have a bit more fuel. I don't like slim margins.

As I recall, the reason for Kerbin being so small was for gameplay: It's a lot easier to design rockets for a small planet than a large one. As far as Kerbol goes - that was likely just a subjective "this looks okay" decision. Being that Kerbol's size is mostly aesthetic, I'm not sure it would be worth spending time fixing.

Patched conics: I don't notice anything terribly bad with them right now. My biggest beef is really with the maneuver node editing. Way too fiddly, and far to easy to lose track of it. Rocket stability / part attachment node strength: It's actually very much improved since the early days of KSP, and IMO is at a good place currently. Part of the fun of KSP is overcoming design challenges with your spacecraft. Having to use struts is part of the price you pay for designing large rockets. Mission and timewarp management: I'd agree with this. Planetary exploration: Agreed. That said - they have made some progress in that area. There are missions to build bases, and you can get resources now. But it can still be improved. Contracts and rewards: I'm actually pretty dissatisfied with this system right now. I'd like more missions focused on science - either by rewarding me with a lot more science, or by taking somewhere where I haven't done much science yet. Overall, though, I think KSP's direction is pretty positive. I've liked all of the features they've added so far.

#1 I'd be fine with. #2 - I like the idea of overarching missions. I don't like all the penalties you're proposing, though. I very much prefer to play at my own pace. #3 - I don't really see why this is needed. #4 - I like this idea. #5 - I just checked the science building, and it seems as if they're already on an exponential curve of some sort? The later technologies cost a lot more than the earlier ones. I'm really struggling for science enough as it is. #6 - I like this idea. My biggest issues with the way science is currently set up is the following: Science having its own area of the tech tree. The whole purpose of tech trees in games is to offer players a series of branching choices. If one branch of the tree is so strong that taking other branches first is unthinkable, then the entire point of having a tree rather moot. In the case of KSP as it currently stands, you have to go down the area with the science, otherwise you'll be hurting. It would be much better if the science stuff was integrated into the other areas of the tree, rather than having its own area. Very little way to gain science via contracts. 4 science from a contract, when I need hundreds of science for the next item on the tree? That's a joke. Not to mention very few contracts seem to encourage me to do things to get more science. I could probably get a lot more science if I weren't on a tight budget and needed the contracts to keep up on income. I didn't do much on the Mun, and there's more I could do there. But, since I've gone off to Minmus, the Mun stuff is gone now. I would REALLY like a better way of assessing what science still needs to be done. Ultimately, I think I'd like some way to "direct" the contracts I'm getting. Some ability to say "I'd like to focus on science for a while," or "I'd like to do some Mun missions for a bit."

90% of science unlocked without leaving Kerbin? How? I don't want to play Kerbal Airplane Program.

Kerbalstuff shut down and the Mediafire link is broken :(. Also, the entry in CKAN would need to be updated since kerbalstuff shut down. EDIT: Looks like Mediafire is essentially banned from the forum. Time to look at Curse or spacedock.info?

So - I've been to the Mun and to Minmus and back, and I haven't used radiators yet. When will I need them, and how will I know I need them?

I've used jEdit for code editing and Art of Illusion for raytracing, they are written in Java. RuneScape and the PC version of Minecraft are written in Java.

When I say "crash," I don't mean just the dreaded blue screen of death. I mean any exception, such as a null pointer exception.

Reaction wheels may be a bit OP, but I'm fine with them. What really feels cheaty is the ability to translate parts to practically any position.

Uh, no. * Java does not fix random crashes. It's a great language, but apps written in Java can crash like any other language. * Java does not fix memory leaks. Sure, it helps a lot with memory management via a garbage collector, but you can still get memory problems if you're not careful. You have to release all references to something before it will be garbage collected. Not to mention that letting the language perform its own memory management leads to problems with games - a lot of Java games stutter occasionally as the garbage collector pauses the entire VM to sweep the memory. * Java actually limits the amount of memory given to an application. Which is why web pages exist that tell you how to have it give you more memory. So it has its own version of the 32-bit memory limitation. * Unity provides a lot of features (such as physics) that would need to be written from scratch if they were to use Java. Why reinvent the wheel? One thing I can tell you for sure is that no language in the world can fix memory limitations imposed by your own hardware and decision not to use a pagefile. Modern SSDs should be fine with pagefiles. The situation has improved greatly since the early days.

Actually, that's a better strategy than you might think - it helps to keep the list short and easy to use. You don't need a comprehensive checklist. In fact, you don't want a comprehensive checklist - it would just end up being boring and long. KSP is a game, you should be having fun! In fact, in real life situations - such as the real NASA - ensuring that checklists are short is important. You don't want people to be tempted to "shortcut" and skip critical items. You want checklists to be easy to read and use. It's very important that checklists are not unintelligible messes. A good read on checklists and how to use them is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. As far as stupid things I've noticed too late - I'd say staging and remembering to bring the right crew. Especially tourists four tourism contracts, heh. Maybe I need a checklist .

* Designed a two-part manned ship for Duna: Lander, and interplanetary transport. * Launched both parts (after several tries, of course). * The arrangement has opposing engines after docking, forgot to turn off lander's engines, wasted some fuel, oops . . . * Turns out my lander design is top heavy, landed at an angle and was very scared that it would top over while on EVA. * The lander's lowest stage blows up when I stage it, leaving me with a single solar panel. * Almost forgot to fulfill the contract requirement of doing science while in orbit around Duna, a quick EVA fixed that. * Lander was set as the part to control from, which meant my spacecraft was pointed in the wrong direction when I attempted a major burn . . . * . . . which lead me right into Duna's atmosphere where the game promptly autosaved! * . . . which I was able to recover from, but left my fuel situation in a questionable state. * Thank goodness for aerobraking at Kerbin. * Didn't have an antenna, and the last stage was just the splashdown capsule, so I have to EVA to grab the science from the rest of the lander. * Mission success! Was able to recover the capsule and fulfill all contract requirements.

Here is my output_log.txt (from version 365 or 364, I forget which?), perhaps it will be useful. https://www.dropbox.com/s/x2mgc7nsbb39mu4/output_log.txt?dl=0

Eh, that unlocked everything. While I have many things researched, not quite as much as it gives me. Dunno what log you want, here is my KSP.log, I will gladly upload any log you request. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vax9e4hxd7nwknj/KSP.log?dl=0

That bug seems to be fixed now, thanks.

. . . and right away, I got a satellite from an escape pod with the following text: "Inside the Resource Pod you found a basic satellite, still intact, and enough rocket fuel for it to reach escape velocity." Which would actually be way too much fuel, because as I understand it, the behavior of satellites in the game is to stay inside some orbital layer temporarily and fall back to the planet. Maybe I'm wrong, I just started playing, but I don't think the game has any mechanics that revolve around sending satellites into deep space . . . I think they meant "orbital velocity," not "escape velocity."

I'm sorry, now you've lost 30 minutes of your life to laughter. Thanks Danny for the video!

Learned late that they were adding the asteroids to old saves, so I've already started a new save. Tech tree of the old save was a bit of a mess anyways.

Forum searches are generally not very user friendly and have a high noise to signal ratio. This should really be in the MechJeb manual/wiki.