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LittleBitMore

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Posts posted by LittleBitMore

  1.  

    Context: I made a Diplomacy variant board to play with friends. I decided to be both the player and the GM, but turns out this was a terrible idea for conflict of interest reasons, logistics reasons, and mental health reasons. I decided to leave the game via civil disorder (your units and claims still remain on the board, but you don't submit moves, so it just takes however long it takes for someone to kick your zombie units out and take over your land), but it was too boring to simply do that, so I (Pawa pi Suneta) decided to make this video announcing my renunciation of Kerbin and claim over the rest of the solar system and also stars. As of today I am now just the GM of the game.

    This cinematic took 10 hours of my precious time, near-consecutive. Let me know if you like it!

  2. Hey! I'm having some issues with these contracts, specifically the "request clearance for takeoff" step of the first contract ("Let's Start an Airline"). The plane hasn't launched yet and is still in the Prelaunch state, and has started at the KSC runway as requested. The passenger was added to the flight using the prelaunch passenger GUI (as opposed to launching the vessel with them inside), and the contract should be started. Do you know why this might not be working?

  3. While you can in theory skip past probes entirely and just go through science mode with only manned landings and completely ignore all other missions, you maybe should not. It's no fun that way. Part of the fun in KSP is setting up orbital infrastructure like scanning satellites and relays (I always play with SCANsat), and part of the fun is working yourself up to those big missions. When I do an interplanetary landing, I need it to look like it could support the crew for that many years, despite how unnecessary that usually is.

  4. Addressing a few things since I unfortunately feel the need to

    On 6/10/2024 at 5:22 PM, RayneCloud said:

    Then don't buy GTA 6. Actually stand by your principles.

    Don't buy anything from,
    2K
    Rockstar
    Ghost Story
    Zynga

    All of these are owned by Take Two.

    This was my plan. I knew these companies are subsidiaries. I'm committing to it. I never was going to buy GTA6 for dozens of other reasons, and in the OP I've linked to a page which lists games and companies owned by T2.

    On 6/11/2024 at 8:56 AM, Lisias said:

    I beg to suggest an alternative: only buy solid products with good reputation, disregarding the owner.

    You get what you pay for - choosing products based purely on the owner will induce Companies to create cheat cheap, disposable front-men front-companies to sell crappy products and nothing will change.

    Reward the good deeds, punish the bad ones - no matter who did the deed. This is what can help to bring back the market to sane levels.

    That said, I agree that it's harder and harder to find a solid product with good reputation with the Take Two label on it - so I'm not saying you are inherently wrong, I'm just proposing an alternative M.O. to do the same thing. ;)

    I'm doing this out of principle, and not entirely because I think Take Two only makes bad products. I just cannot trust their management any further.

    5 hours ago, K33N said:

    I don't think that the publisher is to blame in this case.

    and yet, somehow, judging by the fact that my post has a thesis that is directly against your belief, my post seems to have already made the assumption that it is the publisher's fault. this is something I'm going to stay firm on here, and I'm not fully sure why this post was the one you chose to express this view as opposed to a more contextually relevant one from someone more like-minded who you can relate to and agree with

    On 6/11/2024 at 8:58 AM, MarcAbaddon said:

    This feels a bit silly. I am not going to pass on Civ 7 if it looks good, just because 2K is a subsidiary of Take Two. 

    It's obviously your choice to do so, but I'd recommend at least asking yourself if you apply the same level of scrutiny to your other hobbies and purchases. Because probably 90% of the stuff you buy, ultimately is linked to companies that did much shadier stuff than what happened with Take Two and KSP 2, where at least it seems like a sound business decision to cancel. You could e.g., start with Nestle. 

    I do when I can, I avoid Nestle when I can accurately track down which companies and products it owns (which is unnecessarily difficult-- thanks, Nestle), I avoid Apple under as many circumstances as I can, and I don't like to excessively fund companies who can't prove they care about not killing our ecosystems. That being said, there are often situations where it's unavoidable-- such as when I can't figure out which companies Nestle owns, or when Apple holds a monopoly on a technology or software that I need for school or work, or when all my options are equally terrible from a pollution perspective. Video games are a noteworthy exception: you will only ever buy a video game when you do not need it. Thus, I can always not buy it.

  5. On 12/19/2023 at 1:51 PM, Puggo said:

    I see, but I am using the Multiplayer (Luna) version since I want to battle my friends. Does it only work in multiplayer or what? 

    I am also experiencing this same issue, as have many on the Github. I'm not able to use any weapons, as the ammunition always reads "0" regardless of what I do. In addition, the target crosshair seems to be broken, and stays at the craft's spawn point on the runway. Weapons that experience these issues do not fire even if Infinite Ammo is enabled. Anyone have ideas or fixes?

  6. 4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

    Hard disagree. Take Two is about to release what's very probably going to become the most sold game in history, and even if we look past that, they might release bangers in the future anyways. KSP2's budget was less than 1% of Take Two's worth. How much of their potential userbase do you think the few people remaining here represent?

    It's a complete waste of time and might forbid you from enjoying other games in the future. Boycotts require a majority of the customer base to work... whilst in these forums and even the discord we might have... 300 people if I'm being really generous.

     

    5 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

    I understand there's very little chance of this doing anything. I don't really care, I'm doing it anyway.

     

  7. 15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

    Instead of this, it might be far more optimal to place the popcorn on standby :)

    unfortunately, when I see people fight over something I care about, it just makes me sad

    3 minutes ago, TomKerbal said:

    Whow great. A good deed every day. I've been trying in vain to become a vegetarian for years.

    yeah, similar story here. I try to become vegetarian but I am in a family and thus I do not control what everyone else buys and cooks. Something I've done is taken a look at the carbon footprints of different meat industries and noticed that chicken has a much smaller footprint than beef, so if I can't avoid meat, I try to select chicken over beef, which helps me feel a little bit better about my inability to avoid meat altogether.

  8. It's pretty obvious that, right now, Kerbal Space Program 2 is either dead or indefinitely in limbo. The entire team has been laid off, it's been near radio silence, and they've confirmed to be having severe difficulty selling the IP and the game rights to other companies. The future of KSP2 is most likely going to end negatively unless something changes. I would like it to return and be revived somehow, even though I know this is extremely unlikely. Recent developments and investigative journalism have revealed that this is largely the fault of Take-Two Interactive. I have very little control over Take-Two Interactive as a random citizen of some random place that is inconsequential to their company, but there is exactly one thing that I as a consumer can do to vocally express my distaste and exert some sort of force on the emotionless behemoth that is Take-Two Interactive.

    I, as a previously-semi-frequent customer of Take-Two Interactive's games, will refuse to buy their products or fund them in any form unless they make the decision to maintain or revive KSP2's development. To put it short, I'm boycotting T2.

    I understand there's very little chance of this doing anything. I don't really care, I'm doing it anyway. It's not just in the hopes of eliciting a response from T2, it's also out of principle. I fundamentally cannot justify supporting them and their actions. It's the same reason I try not to buy things through Amazon or spend my money on YouTube Premium. Sure, these services may make my life a little more enjoyable and convenient, as some games from T2 may. But I have to draw a line because I do not appreciate it when the choices of where I spend my money directly support things I disdain.

    What T2 did to the development of KSP2 is, in my moral code, inexcusable. Their actions were the primary cause of KSP2's fate whilst they allowed the blame to be redirected to the largely-innocent development team. It is obvious Intercept Games made a few mistakes, but they were given a very difficult opening by the grandmaster, and even one minor blunder would've been enough to ruin the game. I do not blame Intercept Games. I do not blame Nate Simpson for overpromising and underdelivering (his entire job was to dream big, and dream big he did). I do not blame the programmers for making a buggy mess of a game that took a whole year to become nearly as stable and half as performant as vanilla KSP1. I do not blame the community managers for not telling the community just how difficult and rocky things looked from the inside, and instead assuring us that everything was going fine. I see no reason to when the core of their problems was the funding they were given, the task they were given, and the time they were given. All of these problems were, for the most part, the cause of Take-Two Interactive and their demands for KSP2's production.

    By boycotting T2, I'm not missing out on much anyway, they've sorta shredded whatever trust I had in their ability to properly manage a game development/production studio. They had a few games I was interested in, and I'm a fan of a few of their series, but there are many other game development studios out there that I'd much rather support. I've been considering buying Hades due to its good reputation, but recently, I've found it much easier to resist buying it and being perfectly satisfied with the games in my library. Maybe Civilization VI would've been nice to try, but I'm much more easily dissuaded by the price tag than I was a few months ago, and perhaps I can instead look at other 4X games. Sure, I've been wanting to try Sid Meier's Railroads! for a while, but honestly, maybe I should just go outside and visit the cargo train yard in my town and do real actual trainspotting. I have no need for any of their games, especially when they could just lay off a game's entire development studio if the short-term forecast for a game is in the red, simultaneously stifling the future potential of the game as well as uprooting the lives of dozens to hundreds of hardworking developers. This is the kind of thing they've been doing for a while-- KSP2 just happens to be probably the most publicized, most recent, and largest example.

     

    Join the boycott if you feel like it, don't join if you don't feel like it. I just wanted to announce it because doing it silently isn't going to allow T2 to glean the message. Feel free to criticize me or whatever, I don't care. You are not currently capable of convincing me to not do this unless you give me a spectacular reason.

    A relevant resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Take-Two_Interactive_games

     

    (I humbly request you be nice to eachother in the replies to this post.)

  9. On 5/31/2024 at 8:12 PM, MARL_Mk1 said:

    Honestly I couldn't give more of a crap about the Discord. But if the KSP forums were to be closed tomorrow (hypothetical scenario), the game itself would be done for.

    Every piece of material, discussion, mod pages, custom configurations, guides, a literal decade of ongoing resources about Kerbal Space Program as we know it. Gone. 
    Yes, I know the mods and most files and resources aren't hosted through the forums. They are on Github, Spacedock, etc. But these forums are a fundamental piece of the game. 

    @Dakota @Nerdy_Mike I know the whole deal about not being able to say anything about the ongoing events because of NDAs, but could you guys comment on if there are any guarantees about these forums staying online for the foreseeable future? I know Dakota has said so in the past, after knowing about the Take-Two WARN notice, and I quote: "this server isn't going anywhere any time soon. same with the forums.".

    But what certainty do we have about this statement? We also were told "We're funded, KSP2 isn't going anywhere"  yet here we stand today. If the KSP IP were to be sold to god knows who, I'm supposing they'd be on their absolute right to just cut the plug completely at will (Or am I wrong? I really hope I am).

    KSP2's fate hurts, but losing these forums in any way in the future would be even more devastating to Kerbal Space Program as a whole.

     

    i think there are ways to facilitate a backup of the forums, and that's by scraping the entire thing, storing it somewhere, and uploading it again using a third party provider, which would be a good idea if money wasn't required to maintain a forum. it has happened in the past though with other communities

  10. Part 2: Russet Skies

    Spoiler

    L9GBzxX.png

    An ultra-lightweight and skeletonized glider flew high over the russet, sandy surface below. The constant chopping whir of the propellors as they spun at several hundred revolutions per minute resonated through the craft. The sleek solar panels on the spine of the low-mass plane constantly refuelled the aircraft’s generous batteries, allowing it extended flight times whilst the dull sun filtered through the dusty atmosphere.

    Its massive wings spanned over a dozen meters, despite its resemblance to a malnourished pelican. Duna’s thin atmosphere required such a wingspan to have access to higher altitude regimes and make rescues on desolate mountains, Sidnie noted. This craft was a marvel of engineering-- a fast, agile rotor-powered plane on Duna of all places. Though, she’d have more time and mental energy to properly appreciate the craft’s majesty had her ankle not been Killing Her.

    “So, what were you doin’ all the way out there?” said the paramedic, trying to make small talk.

    The paramedic, a Minmusian kerbal by the name of Edlin Kertop, had managed to quickly load her into the cramped interior of the craft after landing. The ambulance plane’s interior space was miniscule: a cot next to the hatch in the back which Sidnie laid on, and a swiveling seat next to the front window which Edlin sat. The rest of the interior space was littered with various first aid supplies, including the splint being used to keep her fractured ankle straight. She’d recieve proper medical attention in Russet Skies, but for now this would keep it from further damage.

    Sidnie expressed her disdain for Duna’s resident engineers, saying, “All the kraken-posessed engineers on this kraken-posessed planet were too lazy to fix a rover, so I went out to go fix it.”

    CnM7brI.png

    Edlin nodded. “I see. What happened t’ break yer ankle anyways?”

    “I fixed the rover, apparently, since it drove off while I was on it, and I fell off. Punctured my suit and broke my ankle.” Sidnie explained. Luckily, the rescue craft had gotten there so quickly that she didn’t even experience any oxygen deprivation before being loaded into the pressurized craft.

    The paramedic grimaced. “I could never do what you do, Sid. I doubt it’s easy, y’know, getting out every day and hammering bits and bobs together to fix some complicated machine or doohickey or whatnot. ‘Specially since some of those things keep kerbals alive.”

    Sidnie gave a bit of a snort. “I could sa the same thing for you. A wounded kerbal that a paramedic fixes isn’t much different from a damaged rover that an engineer fixes. And don’t call me Sid.”

    Edlin gives a chuckle, and nods. “I s’pose you’ve got a point there.”

    QyO1KUJ.png

    “We’re approachin’ Russet Skies now,” Edlin commented. “Keep a hand on the railing here, it’s a windy day today.”

    Sidnie obliges. She’s never had to land a VTOL during windy conditions, but she can’t imagine it’s very easy, especially if the VTOL is propellor-powered.

    The propellor servos slowly clanked as the rotors shifted to an upright position. The craft’s horizontal velocity was cancelled by clever control of the plane’s attitude as Edlin tilted it to and fro. The plane descended from its vantage point in the sky, and Russet Skies came into clear view through the front window.

    LycgDrn.png

    “Easy does it…” Edlin mumbled to himself. Sidnie wisely let him focus.

    As she looked at Russet Skies, Sidnie noticed one interesting trait. The loading/unloading pad (designed for VTOLs like this one, no doubt) was obviously not large enough to comfortably fit this large aircraft. How was Edlin expecting to land it there? She could estimate the pad’s size by eyeballing it, and if the plane landed on it diagonally, it could fit, maybe. Potentially. Assuming all goes good.

    “Ah, hmm. That’s no good.”

    Sidnie raised an eyebrow. “Edlin?”

    “Ahm, nevermind that, Sid. The right rotor is not really, ah, slowing down when I put on th’ propellor brakes.” Edlin mumbled. “No matter. I’ve flown worse craft.”

    “Edlin, we’re coming in a little close,” Sidnie pointed out as the plane drifted through the air, strafing towards the construction crane of Russet Skies.

    “Trust me, I--” KLANGKRUNCHSCRRRTCHBONKTHUNK

    fepQEOb.png

    The jolt of the crash hadn’t been very comfortable for Sidnie (whose ankle was very vocally protesting this change), but she survived. Edlin also survived without injury.

    To Edlin’s credit, the plane successfully landed on the helipad, though notably one of its wings was truncated and its propellor had careened off into the distance. The other propellor had its blades stripped by collision with the helipad.

    “We’ve arrived!” Edlin said cheerily after several seconds were taken to process the event. “Now we can get yer ankle fixed up in the medbay.”

    Sidnie sat there, stunned. “...Of course.”

    ---

    In the past century or so since Jebediah Kerman landed on the Mun, kerbalkind’s technology had rapidly accelerated as individuals from around the world studied the sciences and made unprecedented alliances with their enemies for the common goal of exploring the stars. This led to a massive leap in medical sciences too, as kerbals studied methods of preventing and treating injuries and illnesses in the harsh environment of space.

    Incredibly, broken ankles were relatively quick fixes-- a bit of open surgery, a dollop of bone repair formula, a bit of lasering to set the formula, and some patching up, and your bones were as good as new (with, of course, a recommendation to go easy on your new ankle for a few days). It was only a few hours after she woke up from the surgery, and she was already capable of going home if she really needed to.

    Of course, she didn’t need to (nor necessarily want to) make the trip all the way back to PREMIERE to continue her infuriating and tedious job. Not when she could be enjoying medical leave in one of Duna’s finest establishments, watching the horizon of Duna as the desolate planetary base breathed.

    (Author's note: It was at this point I installed Magpie Mods and TUFX. The illustrations therefore become Snazzier.)

    jpVHtzJ.png

    Logistics rovers came and went, taxis and buses ferried tourists to and from different destinations across Duna’s surface, rotorcraft came for quick and urgent trips to remote establishments, and spaceplanes carried individuals and cargo to and from low Duna orbit every few hours. This wasn’t something Sidnie often got to see in her little boring refinery. Sure, rovers came every now and then to pick up the stuff PREMIERE made, but they were usually automated. Crew transfer only really came when people went on leave, quit, or were hired.

    It got pretty lonely out there. No people. No adventure.

    Sidnie took one last glance out the window. Ah, the J-7 rover was here. The rover that nearly killed her. Probably dropping off its goods and getting repairs.

    qHwClUd.png

    Sidnie left the window behind and headed down to the cafeteria room, hobbling a little so as to not put too much pressure on her recently-reassembled ankle. After travelling down the small elevator in the spine of the main tower, she looked over the cafeteria. Edlin was there eating some sort of salad.

    Edlin looked up from his meal, and gave a friendly, “Howdy!”

    “Hey, Edlin! Thanks for saving me back there, I owe you one.” Sidnie says, grabbing a sandwich from one of the nearby food counters.

    “Course! It’s what paramedics do. Wouldn’t’ve signed up fer the job if I didn’t enjoy it,” Edlin responds with his characteristic Minmus accent, giving Sidnie a thumbs up.

    Sidnie pulls up a chair to continue small talk. “Yeah, speaking of, that talk in the plane got me thinking. Isn’t it scary, being a paramedic?”

    Edlin nods. “That it is. Took me a lot o’ thinkin’ before making the call and choosing being a paramedic. Figured it’s just more exciting than being a pharmacist.”

    “Being a first responder… I couldn’t do it if I tried. I don’t think I could stand the risk of someone not making it.” Sidnie responds bluntly.

    The paramedic gave a solemn nod. “Not everyone can do it. It’s… not fun if something turns sour. You start blamin’ yourself for having a slow plane or a leaky respirator.” Edlin adds with a bright smile, “But that’s too sad to talk about right now! How’re you enjoying your stay at Russet Skies? It’s a big tourist hub, y’know.”

    “I’ve been here a lot, it’s basically the only big spaceport that isn’t for specific things, like launching--”

    Sidnie is interrupted by a blaring alarm, immediately followed by someone speaking over the intercom.

    Ic4ZYgT.png

    “ALERT: Cargo SSTO E17-23 has taken off without authorization and refuses to respond to queries. It is suspected to have been hijacked. Please report any suspects to me, Kirvey Kerfen, Head of Public Safety, and visit my office, room 402. Stay calm, as we at Russet Skies are in no danger, and it is headed south.”

    “E17 class? But those don’t have any seats, do they?” Sidnie wondered out loud. “How do you hijack a plane with no pilot seat?”

    Erlin jokes with a chuckle, “Maybe it’s one of them ghost possession situations!”

    Sidnie gives a small laugh in response, but is still lost in thought. Nobody can sit in the unmanned cargo plane, so it obviously couldn’t’ve been illegally boarded. Plus, they must know the identity if the cameras caught someone leaving Russet Skies and boarding the plane. So, obviously, none of that happened.

    So what else? Did someone stick a cockpit in the cargo bay? That makes no sense, someone would’ve noticed it, and it would’ve had to come from somewhere.

    That leaves pretty much one option, and that’s that someone is remotely accessing and controlling the plane. She looks outside at the window where the plane once was. The plume from the VTOL engines left stirrings in the dust, and the landing legs left deep footprints where the plane once stood.

    And then she looked towards the construction area. You know, the big rocket pad with a big crane on top. Can’t miss it.

    Next to it was the disassembled corpse of the J-7 rover, missing several parts-- most noteworthy, the canisters of hazardous materials.

    VYKDTrB.png

    This was very fishy. Something was up. Someone took some hazardous canisters, shoved them in a spaceplane, and launched it to who knows where. The Head of Public Safety knew, obviously, since this was all on camera, so she didn’t feel the need to head up to his office. Instead, she felt the need to do something insane about it. She had an idea. A very reckless idea.

    She quickly ran (very lopsidedly) to the public radio in the cafeteria, used for calling nearby ships on public bandwidths.

    “Sidnie? Whatcha getting up to?” Erlin asks, a bit confused, and a bit sad that his conversation partner clearly had something they were about to do.

    Sidnie turned to Erlin. “Erlin, I’m about to do something very crazy. It’s gonna be kinda insane. It’s gonna be super bonkers. I might get on the news.” She then punched in the frequency used for taxi planes, such as the one just outside.

    “Ah, uhm, be safe, alright?” Erlin responded.

    Sidnie didn’t respond, because she was already on the phone. “Hey! You! Taxi pilot. The one outside Russet Station. You there?”

    “Uh, yes? What can I help you with? I want to take a shower at Russet so I might be a bit.” How convenient, Sidnie thought to herself.

    Sidnie asks with a neutral tone, “Can I steal your entire plane?”

    The taxi pilot replies, “Pffft! Hah! Yeah, right, sure. That’s a totally reasonable thing to suggest.”

    Bingo. “No takesy backsies,” Sidnie replies with a smile, and hangs up.

    Being public airwaves, this was recorded by Russet Skies’ traffic control. Therefore, it was effectively in writing. Contracts have been signed over radio like this before, though not usually accidentally like this. If it came to court, she could claim that he signed a contract saying she could steal his plane.

    She quickly heads downstairs to the airlocks, puts on her suit, and heads out the airlock, slowly limping over to the plane. She climbs into the cockpit (abandoned due to the taxi driver taking a shower), straps herself in, and examines the controls.

    Flying a plane should be easy, right? You just use the knobs and dials and levers and switches to keep speed and angle in check. She could think of it like resource flows. Speed is energy, energy is a resource. She has to manage the resource and make sure it doesn’t go so low that the plane stalls or so high that the plane overheats. Drag is a resource you don’t want if you want to go fast. Point prograde to drain this resource, but you’ll lose your upwards velocity if you don’t nose up. Great, fine, easy. Easy peasy.

    She flips the switches necessary for takeoff. Stability assist on. Engine mode: VTOL. Throttle up-- woah that’s a lot of thrust throttle down right this instant. She sets the navigator to fly in the same direction the cargo plane flew off to, switches the engines to flight mode, and throttles up.

    HMaE5FL.png

    wIpLHRc.png

    Ignore the fact that Russet Skies keeps moving around, it's accidentally exploded approximately 5 times now.

    Edit: Might do a second pass over this chapter and rewrite it a little, I'm not too proud of my writing here

  11. I don't care what side you're on, I'm just sick of the fighting people have been getting into with relation to newest developments relating to KSP2. I dread whenever I get a notification from the forum now. It is making everyone involved less happy. for frickityfrack's sake please just allow yourself to post aboutsomething else

  12. 25 minutes ago, Yaivenov said:

    Choosing a creative director with a track record of making grandiose promises and then not delivering was the second (huge) red flag.  The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and Nate Simpson has I believe three different failed game titles to his name with KSP2 making his fourth.  One more failed project and he'll be an Incompetence Ace.

    The first red flag was when an investment bank bought the IP.

    yet again, it is Nate's job to dream, and the programmers' jobs to tell him "no I don't think that's super reasonable". Nate was never the tech guy, it was not in the job description to think about code practicality

  13. I managed to land on the Mun! I think this is the "The Please Go To The Mun Machine 5006"! (It was originally 5000 but several previous iterations had launch issues due to the heckishly thick atmosphere and high gravity)

    U60w9av.png

    8f8Gt9t.png

    yf3TRHs.png

    I don't think I'm a good enough player to get any further than this, but I'll take the accomplishment of the first community conquering of the Mun!

  14. Hello! I have a very big install, and it's begun running into performance issues. I'm reluctant to reduce the number of mods, because many parts mods have their parts incorporated in various important missions and spacecraft in my saves. I'm trying to find mods to cut down on while still keeping as many of the main parts mods as I can. So far on the chopping block is Parallax 2 scatters, Restock, and Planetside Exploration Technologies (a large parts mod I'm not using many parts from).

    Restock is the one I'm least attached to, but unfortunately, it is a dependency of Restock+, and removing it would require removing Restock+, which adds a lot of parts that I use very frequently and it would likely result in bad things for various craft of mine.

    Is there any way to uninstall Restock while still maintaining the functionality of Restock+? Relatedly, what happens if I load a craft in-flight that has parts from mods that have been uninstalled?

  15. I went on a walk today to Subway, and while standing at an intersection, two teens were standing there also waiting at the intersection. After leaving them behind, a few minutes later one of them drives up to me in their car and says "you're my favorite character!" I then ask, "what??" and they repeat themselves and drive off with a thumbs up. Very surreal but a compliment I will be riding off the high from for months!

    My best guess is that my outfit was certainly something today, considering I was wearing a white hoodie, a white shirt, gray summer shorts, heavy winter gloves, teal and gray shoes, headphones, and these massive iridescent skier sunglasses

  16. I think Vanamonde confirmed in the Ask the Forum Moderators thread in Kerbal Network that the forums won't be shutting down because of this, and should be online for a while. I don't have a link because my phone heavily disagrees with this forum and it's a miracle I'm able to make this post

  17. i love this thread so much, it's a rare bastion of unfiltered love and compassion in an otherwise hostile subforum

    A huge thank you to Intercept Games and all its members. I hope you find work that's good for you, and, even though I bet you're not really allowed to talk about it, I hope whatever it is that happened isn't the downfall of the project you poured your hearts into. I appreciate you all!

  18. I think the actual thing that's happening is an elaborate April Fools prank, but after some internal disputes regarding the April Fools prank contract made with a subsidiary company, Take Two pulled the contract, made dozens of April Fools technicians jobless, and gave it to someone else (which is why it took so long to ship)

  19. Hello! This is a new fanfiction I'm writing, inspired by masterful works such as Project Voyage. This will be a long project and will take a long time to complete.

    I make all illustrations myself using heavily modded KSP1. All craft I make are my own unless specified otherwise. All craft and bases function for their intended purpose and can perform the feats shown in the story unless specified otherwise.

    Modlist (for illustrations):

    Spoiler

    NOTE: Modlist prone to extreme fluctuations. I add, remove, exchange, and replace mods basically every time I boot up the game.

    Action Groups Extended (AGExt 1:2.4.1.3)
    AirPark ReContinued (AirParkContinued 2:1.7.1.7)
    Airships (Heisenberg v2.19.2)
    AT Utils (AT-Utils v1.10.1)
    B9 Part Switch (B9PartSwitch v2.20.0)
    Benjee10 sharedAssets (Benjee10-SharedAssets v0.2.2)
    BetterTimeWarpContinued (BetterTimeWarpCont 2.3.13)
    BonVoyage (BonVoyage 1:1.4.1)
    Breaking Ground (BreakingGround-DLC 1.7.1)
    Camera Tools continued (CameraTools v1.34.0)
    Classic Stock Resources (ClassicStockResources v1.2.2)
    ClickThrough Blocker (ClickThroughBlocker 1:2.1.10.21)
    Community Category Kit (CommunityCategoryKit v112.0.1)
    Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack v112.0.1)
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    Without further ado, here's Part 1!

    Part 1: Rover Maintenance

    Spoiler

    XXBCXbi.png

    This world was not a vibrant or thriving one. Dull, lifeless, and bland. Winds blew and whistled, storms rumbled and churned, but there wasn’t even a semblance of something reminiscent of a bird singing or a wolf howling at the moon. Boulders and slabs of rock lazily dotted the rusty sands that covered this world, but there were no trees, no rivers or lakes, no wild animals searching for food. Nothing could survive in this frozen desert wasteland.

    And yet, there was an allure to the void of life. An unscathed world, entirely devoid of the influence of biology and biochemistry, left to the whims and mercy of geology. A world which never dealt with root erosion, oxygenation events, or chalk deposits. A world of untampered silence, a world with a purity never before experienced by a living creature. This ethereal quiet and peaceful serenity of the Duna landscape, untouched and pure for billions of years, was birdsong in and of itself, and nothing could ever shatter its sterile tranquility.

    CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!  “Agh, you lousy good-for-nothing bucket of bolts, WORK already!”

    That is, until the kerbals found it and began colonizing it.

    qZycFMK.png

    By some means, either through skill, tenacity, or dumb luck, the kerbals managed to establish a permanent presence on Duna. There were multiple small outposts erected on Duna’s surface. They were self-sufficient, though they all relied on the support of eachother to prevent shutdown-- one base was good at extracting water from the soil, one base was skilled with refining radioactive materials, one base was capable of assembling rockets.

    This base, the PREcious MInerals and Exotics REfinery (PREMIERE), had the capability of refining many resources-- iron, silver, water, even gold. This majestic facility, a testament to the skill/tenacity/dumb luck of kerbalkind, happened to be the longest-operated permanent establishment of several on Duna’s surface. It was comprised of 4 primary structures: a habitation tower, an ore collection tower, a logistics/refinery building, and a majestic solar array tower to keep it all powered.

    caMiPJT.png

    It wasn’t easy to forget how impressive such an accomplishment and feat was, but Sidnie Kerlin, one of the few engineers operating the skeleton crew at PREMIERE, managed it anyways. Despite its immense capabilities, she could only focus on what it unfortunately lacked, and what it unfortunately seemed to be incapable of supporting: zeonium extraction.

    Sidnie threw another wrench at the atmospheric sieve from the vantage point of the boom arm of the maintenance rover. CLANG! Impressively, even after having already thrown four wrenches, she procured more from the pockets of her utility belt. CLANG, CLANG!

    HDs2gVy.png

    “Sidnie, what’s all that racket?” crackled a voice over the intercom-- namely, one of the other few members of the skeleton crew, Cambin Keremone. Since he was in the water refinery room, overseeing machinery extracting water from raw ore, he was attached to the same building the sieve was, and probably heard Sidnie’s attempts at percussive maintenance and/or anger management. “Is the sieve fan stuck?”

    Sidnie sighed, collected her bearings, and spoke into the intercom, “No, it isn’t-- listen, the sound and whatever caused it is not important right now. I think this zeonium filter for the sieve is designed for Kerbin’s atmosphere.”

    “Pardon me? It-- huh?” Cambin stammered incredulously. “You’re telling us we got shipped Kerbin equipment for our Duna refinery, from a Duna construction facility, through Duna logistics? You do understand how this sounds completely bonkers, right?”

    “I was stuck on that too,” replied Sidnie. “I’ve been troubleshooting this kraken-posessed sieve for days now, and I suspected this from the beginning. Like you, I didn’t believe it. It seems to be working fine, except it has some stuff to work around the presence of oxygen, and nothing to deal with Duna dust.”

    Cambin, still very confused, responds, “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would it be like that? How could anyone have made this kind of mistake along the supply chain?”

    Sidnie defended her judgement and snapped, “Beats me. Do you, for whatever reason, need to come up here and check for yourself?”

    “No, no, I trust your expertise. Listen, you sound stressed, do you need a break?”

    Sidnie sighed, and replied, “Yeah, maybe that would be for the best. Let me go pick up my wrenches.”

    “Wrenches?”

    “Never mind that.” Sidnie said, using the EVA seat controls to lower the arm to a point where she could hop off of it safely.

    NyG625Q.png

    Were they ever going to do anything about the old solar panel tower? Probably not. It was heavy and there were more important things to do with the big construction vehicles on or around Duna.

    She walked around, picking up her wrenches, thinking of what she could do next. She could brew a cup of tea, that usually helped her calm down. She could watch some KerbTube, though she hadn’t downloaded any new videos, and the bandwidth out here was so terrible that she typically had to do that in advance if she wanted to watch anything at a better resolution than 144p. She could just hide in bed with her soft blankets and be done with the world. Once she collected all her projectile percussive maintenance tools, she headed back to the habitation module.

    But just as she was entering the airlock, the small display on her wrist lit up as she heard a notification beep.

    c9F4Cjf.png

    She tapped on the notification on her wrist display, opening up an email. It read:

    URGENT NOTICE: Duna Logistics Rover unit J-7 has stopped responding. Suspected to be a computer malfunction. Currently carrying hazardous materials (1 canister of spent nuclear fuel, 1 canister of explodium). To all civilians, scientists, and pilots, for your safety, please do not approach it. To any available engineers, please visit the rover and assess the damage, and please report if you were able to successfully return it to operation. - Kirvey Kerfen, Head of Public Safety (Duna Branch)

    Immediately after she read the message, several other beeps continued-- replies to the original email.

    GreyWater Absolvement and Habitation cannot spare an engineer, we are busy unclogging our greywater pump. - GWAH

    Fuel Outpost Of Landers and Spaceplanes has no engineers. All our engineers are civilians with engineer licenses given to them by a reputable engineering program, much like licensed engineers, giving them the illusion of legitimacy. Unfortunately they are not suitable for this task. - FOOLS

    Russet Skies has no available engineers. Our engineers are all celebrating the holiday Moar Boosters Day. We did not make it up. - Russet Skies

    Dust Falls is a tourist site. We do not have engineers. We have tour guides. Why did you CC us? - Dust Falls

    Every single establishment on Duna which had engineers said they were all busy, despite the fact the excuses were obviously empty and silly excuses.

    Cambin appeared on the comms again. “Hey, Sidnie. So, you know how I just told you to take a break? About that--”

    Sidnie hopped out of the airlock and hurled a wrench a good 20 meters in order to hit the wall of the room in which Cambin was working, interrupting his speech with a CLANG.

    Sidnie shouted, “FINE. I will get in the STUPID MAINTENANCE ROVER and drive HALFWAY ROUND THE STUPID PLANET to FIX THIS STUPID ROVER, if you are simply TOO LAZY to do it yourself, just like everyone else on this STUPID PLANET.”

    A quiet “Thanks,” was all Cambin could respond with.

    Without another word, Sidnie collected multiple days’ worth of supplies, shoved them in the rover, sat in the chair, set a waypoint, and hurtled along the rough Dunatian terrain at a safe and healthy 25m/s.

    w7VKDCt.png

    She’d been piloting this rover for several years now, ever since she got hired to stay on Duna (a dream come true, one would incorrectly imagine), performing routine maintenance and helping to install new modules to existing bases. Usually, she worked at PREMIERE, seeing as her master’s degree was in geological engineering, perfect for a complicated base involving machinery and rocks.

    This mission wasn’t abnormal (she often found herself going on maintenance trips to fix some poor tourist’s rover whose tires shredded themselves on a rock), though this was certainly one of the longer ones she’d had to perform via rover. If she didn’t need her equipment and repair arm, she would’ve just hailed a propellor plane to take her there in fifteen minutes. Though their speed and convenience were valuable assets somewhere as barren as Duna, she could probably have found one that wasn’t in use for anything important. Alas, it was not meant to be, as how else was she going to bring at least six projectile percussive maintenance tools?

    She packed a few days’ worth of rations, perfect for 130km of driving. The service rover was a solar-powered rover that slept as she did, unable to drive for very long in the night before running out of battery, and thus the trip took much longer than it would have with a fancy nuclear rover. That’s fine, it’s not like she could’ve driven 6 hours a day without some sleep anyways. A 2-hour long sleep was more than enough for her, and she continued as soon as the sun appeared over the horizon.

    After another hour of driving, she finally caught sight of the rover in question.

    yzwaiIC.png

    Sidnie didn’t usually have to send maintenance trips to unmanned logistics rovers. Those had been largely phased out a while ago for the convenience of VTOL cargo planes. Some short-term routes still used logistics rovers, but this one was relatively isolated, in the middle of a massive basin with too few resources to consider setting up refineries.

    As she got closer, she saw the warning signs plastered on the resource canisters. Ah, of course, dangerous goods like this weren’t really put on SSTOs because pilots often benefitted from a high degree of stupidity that often was inconducive with the safe delivery of things like explodium or nuclear waste.

    zwIYA3E.png

    Of which this rover happened to be transporting both. This might be a fun repair session.

    Her goal today, as the email outlined previously, was to assess the damage and get this rover operational again. It also stated the suspected cause was computer troubles, so she’d start there.

    Sidnie steered the rover to align it next to the logistics rover and set the parking brake. The maintenance boom’s servos whirred quietly as they slowly maneuvered themselves to lower the chair at the end to a reachable position as Sidnie commanded with the controls. She put on her suit and exited the airlock.

    To possibly save herself some work, she did a quick walk-around of the derelict logistics rover, and inspected for physical issues, inspecting and scrutinizing every detail she could. She turned on her recorder so she could play back and write down her notes later.

    “Tires fine, intact, not much wear,” Sidnie spoke into the recorder installed in her helmet after looking over each tire and prodding them with wrenches. “Battery indicators on, batteries full. Solar panels are fine, clean enough for sure, sun-tracking working fine. Comms looks good from the outside.”

    Sidnie crawled down underneath the rover and began inspecting its undercarriage for signs of damage. “Drive train looks fine, though a bit rusty. Axles fine too. Suspension looks okay, but front left tire needs some repairs soon. Steering looks okay.”

    Sidnie stood back up and went down the mental checklist of things to work on next. Unfortunately, all signs pointed to her having to check the rover’s navigational systems, causing her to mumble, “Software. Figures.” and conjure mental images of incompetent programmers playing video games instead of fixing some obscure edge case she now had to deal with. She entered the chair on the maintenance boom, positioning it to allow herself to look at the computer interface from above.

    She investigated the rover’s chassis. DLV J-7, it read. Duna Logistics Vehicle unit J-7.

    srHlek0.png

    The J class of logistics rover was a relatively recent one. Logistical engineers designed it for the use case of transporting volatile or fragile goods like this, in the likely event pilots are too incompetent to transport them safely. She recalled all the details she could: redundant battery systems, redundant solar panels, the most advanced navigational system for any rover, extra bracing for the hazardous material canisters, extra wide wheelset. It even had an emergency nuclear reactor to keep its most expensive canisters’ systems powered in the event of panel dusting or rollover. Everything on this rover is perfect for preventing unintended disasters.

    The navigational system thing specifically meant this was going to be a fun debugging process.

    She pried open the doors concealing the fragile electronics of the rover.

    tXG1VMl.png

    She sighed exasperatedly as she noticed the computer’s interface keyboard was glued to the wall of the computer. It would seem as if she would have to operate it by leaning over into the computer compartment and using her clumsy space suit gloves to operate a keyboard that has been glued to a wall. Perfect.

    Sidnie left her chair, balanced herself on the rover’s chassis, and clumsily reoriented herself to access the computer keyboard. “Accessing computer, running syscheck.” Sidnie said, as she ran the command for systems check and read out each line into the recorder.

    DESTINATION: RUSSET SKIES

    BATTERY A: FULL

    BATTERY B: FULL

    BATTERY C: FULL

    CANISTER A: SAFE (EXPLODIUM)

    CANISTER B: SAFE (SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL)

    SOLAR A: NOMINAL

    This continued through all of the rover’s systems, until eventually, Sidnie noticed one thing amiss.

    NAVIGATION: BUFFERING (1D 1H 21M 39S)

    “Navigation systems buffering... for an entire day? What happened? ...Checking sensors,” Sidnie continued, reading out her findings.

    She ran the commands to see the readouts of each sensor. The navcams were fine, they weren’t even dusty. The barometer, tachometers, and motor diagnostics sensors all seemed fine too. GPS was working great. So what was the issue?

    “I’m going to try turning it off and then back on again,” Sidnie announced to her recorder.

    navsys shutdown -r, she typed into the terminal.

    The terminal responded with a simple message reminding her she forgot to say “sudo”. ERROR: Permission denied. User “externalcomputer” does not have the required privileges.

    Sidnie sighed and facepalmed her suit helmet with her padded spacesuit glove. It was not a very effective facepalm.

    sudo navsys shutdowmn -r, she tried, not noticing the typo caused by her bulky gloves.

    ERROR: Unknown command “shutdowmn”.

    “I HATE YOU,” Sidnie shouted at nobody in particular. Maybe the software engineers, maybe the engineers who are forcing her to uncomfortably lean over the edge of the rover to access the terminal, maybe the people who made her do this annoying task in the first place.

    sudo navsys shutdown -r, she typed in once more, but before she could hit the enter key, the rover terminal interrupted with a NAVIGATION: ONLINE, and the rover rumbled beneath her.

    The motors sprung to life, reversing sharply at full throttle. The jolt of the acceleration threw Sidnie backward. She slid down the nose of the rover as it reversed, scrabbling for anything to grab onto with her clumsy space suit gloves. By some miracle, her hands found a ledge to latch onto near the batteries.

    aOOPgqc.png

    Sidnie was not expecting this sort of behavior from a nonfunctional rover. She mentally cursed the software engineers once more with some very choice words as she tried to get a sturdier grasp on the rover before she fell off.

    Unfortunately for her plans to hang on, the rover then decided to drift counterclockwise as it reversed, and Sidnie’s grasp on the battery was lost, and she fell off the nose of the rover.

    v2FRxV3.png

    Sidnie hit a boulder with a THUNK and an “OW”, and pain from the landing jolted through her ankle, which seemed to take the most of the impact. She stayed there for a bit, dazed, the wind knocked out of her. She turned her head and looked over at the automated rover, which drove off in the direction of Russet Skies to finish its delivery.

    Ihgb78T.png

    Sidnie took a breath and said into the recorder, “...Sidnie Kerman, reporting. I think rebooting it fixed it. Please tell the software engineer of the J series that they should go -- “

    BEEEEP, sounded the alarm on her suit. She checked her wrist display.

    SUIT PUNCTURE DETECTED. ESTIMATED TIME REMAINING WITH OXYGEN: 9 MINUTES

    “Great, just great,” she said to nobody but herself. She shut off the recorder, shouted a few expletives. She looked over her suit, and noticed a small cut in the suit near one of her forearms, just barely big enough to be seen. “Today is going great.”

    She slowly and unsteadily got to her feet. Her ankle vehemently disagreed with this choice and instead decided to not let her stand up. She fell back down on the ground with a pained few more expletives.

    Sidnie would start panicking right now, except she already was panicking. Was this it for her? Would she just die here? Of course she had to make the idiotic mistake of trying to access the computer like that. She could’ve just grabbed a USB cable and used the rover’s laptop. There were so many things she could’ve done better, but she failed at this very simple task of typing the reboot command into the rover, and now she was destined to die.

    oqfZvyp.png

    “No, quit, stop. Just breathe.” Sidnie said to herself, snapping out of it. She steadied her breathing as she repeated a mantra her mother often told her: “What’s done is done, what isn’t done isn’t done. Do the stuff that isn’t done.”

    Sidnie mentally scrolled through her options.

    Hopping on one foot back to the maintenance rover would be difficult with this big clunky suit, even ignoring the fact she’d somehow have to use a ladder with only one foot. Not feasible.

    She could hail an emergency plane from Russet Skies. Then she could also get medical attention for her ankle in their medical bay. The only issue was that Russet Skies was something more like a 20-minute flight, one-way. No guarantee she’d last until it landed.

    There wasn’t anything in a nine-minute drive from here, so she couldn’t ask anyone to drive here, help her into their airlock, and bring her to a clinic. Nobody closer than Russet Skies had a regular supply of aircraft capable of picking her up.

    So what else was there? Cover the hole in her suit with something? ...Might as well.

    She looked around for something that could patch the hole. Nothing but rocks around her, and a shard of metal she must’ve pried from the battery casing. Not usable for patching a hole in a suit.

    She checked her suit’s tool belt. Wrench, drill, screws, arc welder, hammer, rope, wrench, spare connector port, wrench-- aha! Duct tape! She quickly tore a strip of it and applied it to her suit. After applying this simple and temporary fix, the display on her wrist changed its value:

    SUIT PUNCTURE DETECTED. ESTIMATED TIME REMAINING WITH OXYGEN: 43 MINUTES

    “That’ll do,” she said, sighing a breath of relief. Wasting no time, she started a call with Russet Skies’ medical bay and requested an emergency plane.

    Reluctantly, Sidnie let herself relax a little bit. Maybe she’d make it out of this one after all.

    QOcAPi1.png

    Let me know if there are formatting issues! That's been the biggest hurdle in getting this onto the forums, is the difference in formatting standards between Google Docs and the forums.

    I expect to upload at least monthly. If I go more than a month between chapters, you're allowed to pester me about it.

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