White Owl

I'm surprised to see such an even split between sandbox and career. (Acknowledging the thread is young and it's a small sample.) I always got the impression that most people were playing career, with only a few oddballs in sandbox. But clearly that's not the case.

Sandbox with self-enforced construction times and gradual tech progression.

I just learned my undocking bugs were because I was using an old version of Procedural Parts. Anything built in the VAB prior to updating that mod was unable to undock. Anything built and launched after updating was able to undock normally.

I still love Procedural Parts! Want you guys to know that. But! There's a pretty serious bug. Any of my crafts that were designed using the old PP, before the most recent update, are unable to undock from anything. I narrowed it down a part at a time until I had a craft with a capsule, two clampotrons, and one procedural tank. Unable to undock. I removed the procedural tank and it was able to undock normally. Rebuilt the craft with a new tank after updating this mod, and it undocked normally. It's largely my fault for not keeping up and failing to notice the mod updated weeks ago. But I thought you need to know.

I want to be excited about this. Really, it's such a cool concept! But the execution is just so poor. It's like when digital cameras were the new thing, but most of the world was still using film. Every once in a while you'd hear somebody all excited about his new camera, hyping up how great and revolutionary it was. Then you'd see the actual photos... and they were blurry low resolution crap! It was years before I saw a digital photo that could compete with film. I think that's the same kind of deal with 3d printing. Exciting tech for the early adopter gadget lovers, but those who just want a quality final product still need to wait a few years. I'm looking at that papercraft thread, and wondering how difficult it would be to adapt those designs to thin sheet aluminum.

I like it!

I did a bunch of troubleshooting to figure out why my spaceships are suddenly unable to undock from anything. Conclusively proved the bug must be related somehow to Procedural Parts, which absolutely sucks because I love Procedural Parts and am completely dependent on them for this save file. Other people aren't having this issue, and PP has always worked well for me in the past... so I'm still missing a big piece of the puzzle. Troubleshooting continues. edit: It's always the simplest thing, isn't it? I didn't realize the mod was updated weeks ago.

No. It makes sense to commemorate some of the real pioneers, but not actors or other media personalities, IMO. Personally, I've always thought it strange that Armstrong has a memorial but Gagarin doesn't. Both of those guys undoubtedly deserve it.

I'd love to have a means of appending notes to individual crew. Just a simple text editor to write down whatever I'm planning for that one kerbal. What kind of realism restrictions are you thinking about?

Also, both of those airplanes were designed closer to WWII than present day. (Really! Look it up!) But yeah, landing gear design tends not to change very much. Engineers decades ago found a few solutions that work well, and for the most part haven't messed around too much with alternate ideas.

While I'm sympathetic to your cause, I have to point out a pretty big flaw in the argument. You say the old ASAS was better, and then show us the current ASAS failing hard. If you really want to illustrate your point, let's see the identical rocket launched with the old ASAS. I personally haven't had any issues with the current system keeping my rockets flying straight, but it's next to worthless for spaceplanes at high AOA.

If you want them to take notice, your better options are 4chan, reddit, and twitter. This forum is probably the worst option. While an interesting idea... I imagine the feelings of the poor mod developer, having spent months or even years creating something that's 95% great but has a few glitches. Imagine those people seeing their mod held up to a more "official" spotlight, and seeing the masses point out the glitches. Or read exactly why the game developers don't like the mod and would never consider adding anything like it to stock. That would be terrible.

My IVA wishlist: #1 - Great visibility. Big windows, positioned so the pilot can actually see outside. Even if that makes the parts slightly unrealistic. #2 - An equivalent airspeed indicator. Merely adding an EAS mode to the current speed gauge would be enough. What I'd really like is an analog gauge; good ol' round dial with a needle pointing to numbers. #3 - Machmeter. The big update is apparently bringing mach effects. If players don't have a means to see their mach number, then they won't understand why the vehicle suddenly starts handling differently. Even if you know it's caused by transonic effects, do you know what speed exactly is transonic at what altitude exactly? I suppose you could memorize a chart instead... #4 - Fix the altimeter. Like this. Change three lines in a config file, and the IVA altimeter will match every other altimeter in the world, including all those other flight sims that players might have experienced. There's a whole bunch of other stuff I'd love to see - like head tracking and functioning MFDs - but those points are the most important omissions/errors in the current IVAs. I do want to point out how very cool it is that KSP has already had working clickable cockpits for so long! Now it's just time to polish them up.

Do you know at what point in the flight they started dispensing chemtrails in the exhaust? And when they stopped? I'd be interested in seeing if there's any correlation with peaks and troughs on that graph.

That's cool.

Not gonna lie, I'd love a big shiny model of my Roc shuttle to hold in my hands and swing through the air while making whooshing noises. That would be absolutely fantastically awesome. But the Roc was built almost entirely out of mod parts. Probably about half were procedural parts of one kind or another. Any chance those could work? And I gotta say... texture is a huge deal for me. Airplanes must be smooth and shiny. But every single picture I've yet seen of any 3D printed object looks rough and gritty. Can the technology not yet do smooth surfaces? Or is that just a million dollar option or something?

That prior post which foresaw Maxmaps not having seen the correct guess here in this thread, and tweeting that nobody guessed correctly... You nailed it exactly. That is exactly what happened.

Oh, damn. Not knowing anything about modeling a moving part, I was hoping it would be a simple change.

After playing around with Skylon for a little bit, and reading through the manual again, I have a couple of suggestions. The real vehicle is intended to power the RCS system with the same LH+LOX mix the engines use. Changing this model to match would be easy, and would also simplify the vehicle. The downside is the player would have to keep an eye on fuel levels whenever maneuvering with the thrusters, and KSP has taught us all that RCS uses a different resource. Still, I think this change is probably worth it. Is it possible for the payload bay doors to open wider? The manual says it should be possible to dock two Skylons together, payload to payload, if necessary to move crew from one vehicle to another. With the current door travel, I don't think it's possible. Ideally I'd like to see the doors open wide enough to expose the very top of a 3.75m payload if looking from the side. The manual's illustrations seem to depict the doors opening that wide, but frustratingly don't give an actual measurement for door travel. I'm loving this plane.

I made a video about this great mod. This is in stock aero, with the minimum amount of mods to make Skylon work. Here's a Module Manager file for the tweaks I made to various parts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8h2ImrVfLXsaDVMY3Q3QzJONjg/view?usp=sharing

It is such a simple and obviously good thing to do. All benefit, no drawbacks. But our devs seem to like the info scavenger hunt model for some bizarre reason... I tried to watch one recorded Squadcast, once. It was neither entertaining nor informative, so I haven't tried since. Here's a thought. Get one of the dedicated KSP livestreamers to play the game, somebody who's genuinely good at streaming and good at KSP. One of those guys already part of the media group. Then you can have a Squad dev show up, field questions in the chat, provide teaser pictures etc. That format would have a better chance at being entertaining and informative.

I long ago removed the entire fueltanks and aero folders, since all those dozens of RAM hogging parts can be easily replaced with a few Procedural Parts and Procedural Wings. I know Bob Fitch started his current savefile by starting from scratch, adding only those parts that will actually be used.

On the other hand, I'm totally fine with calling the sun Kerbol. I like puzzling over this root "ker", and wondering exactly what it means. Does ker mean home, maybe?

Very few placenames ingame actually start with K. It's an extremely dumb joke... never was funny, not even the first time.

Weird thing is, I really like this version but will probably not see her ingame very much. Long ago I asked video viewers to name my kerbals, and I started keeping a list. I still have several hundred names that have never been used... and I think only three or four are female.