i dont know how to forum

Ooh, love the look of this one. Extendable nozzles should allow for some interesting designs, hopefully we can pack them into smaller cargo bays and shrouds.

Reposting my questions from last AMA, as they seem even more applicable here: Many of the more advanced technologies coming later in Early Access fall into the "Way Too Useful" category, as mentioned in the Engines Archetypes dev diary. We've just barely started to see the tip of this with the addition of the SWERV, which currently renders the NERV near-obsolete. What are your goals with regards to balance for these new technologies? Is the intent for late-game parts to essentially replace early parts, or for lower-tech solutions to still be viable and necessary in the late-game? This also applies the other way: how do you intend to incentivize the use of certain "Way Too Useful" technologies to their full potential? For example, torch drives should allow us to reach other planets in a fraction of the time, but there is currently very little advantage to getting somewhere quickly rather than simply time warping through a multi-year journey. I'm also curious about how you handle balance with regards to approachability, depth, and realism. There have been many requests over the years for more complex and more realistic mechanics in the base game, including life support, radiation, more realistic aerodynamics, part failures, interstellar material, relativistic effects, communication delay, and more. Some of these could make great additions, while others could be needlessly punishing. Realism in mechanics can lead to more fun and emergent gameplay, but it can also discourage both new and experienced players who become overwhelmed by the complexity There's no consensus on which of these features would actually benefit the game, or how they should be implemented; ask 10 players which is which and you'll get 11 different answers. What are your goals for gameplay balance here, and how do you decide what additions will or won't benefit the game?

The main advantage of the ion engine is its incredibly high ISP. Nothing else even comes close. You can build small ships with insanely high delta-v and go anywhere you want. The main disadvantage of the ion engine is its incredibly low thrust. Nothing else even comes close. After patch 1, even the RCS thrusters have higher thrust than the ion engine. KSP2's acceleration under time warp makes extremely long burns viable, and the new reactors are able to provide constant electrical power to the engines even without direct sunlight. This makes ion engines far more useful, but I still wouldn't recommend using them for more complex missions such as this one. Being unable to rotate while under time warp makes long burns more difficult. Long burns are also less useful in the limited space of a planet's SOI due to the curvature of the orbit. My current predicament is that I have to rendezvous two craft in very different orbits entirely using ion engines, and I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable solution. Something I'd like to try in the future though is building ships that are able to switch between ion and chemical/nuclear thrust. Ion engines could be used for interplanetary transfers, while chemical engines could be used for short high-thrust burns within a planet's SOI. See here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/engines.php#shiftgears

Update, finally! Sorry for the wait. Bonus:

I agree completely with every aspect of this announcement and desperately wish it were real. I love the concept art so much.

Been playing on my laptop up until now. Finally had the chance to test the game on my marginally better desktop today, and the performance difference is astounding. Flew a mint-chip flavored craft to both Mun orbit and Minmus orbit before returning to Kerbin. Experienced a very annoying maneuver bug but overall had a lot of fun.

This is almost entirely over my head, but what little I do understand is really interesting. Thank you for the elaboration! It seems clear this is a lot more complicated than I had thought, but of course it is rocket science. As I understand it the devs are always on the lookout for more in-depth information on things like this, so I hope they see your AMA question and/or this thread. While I'm sure it's near the very bottom of the priority list at the moment, I'd love to see them continue to develop the plumes to make them even more realistic.

The devs have talked about this, see the dev diary here with accompanying diagram showing high-atmosphere vs vacuum plumes: I believe this was in part inspired by a user response to a previous showcase of the old plumes here on the forums, which Nate showed an interest in learning more about: I'm nowhere near an expert and I can't really speak to the accuracy of these plumes, but it seems to me the devs have done their research. I haven't been able to find much in the way of images of engine plumes in vacuum, especially since in real life they tend to be mostly invisible. Best I've been able to find is this video of a VASIMR test in a vacuum chamber, which looks slightly hyperbolic to me.

Well there's your problem, zero transparency means your rocket is opaque!

I really should experiment with the paint tool more, but every time I try I just go back to the bare metal look. I really like some of the color schemes I've seen other people use, and you can get really creative with it once you start messing with individual part colors. Has anyone experimented with the transparency slider? I haven't really been able to get anything that looks good with it so I've just stuck with using it at 0 or 100.

Many of the more advanced technologies coming later in Early Access fall into the "Way Too Useful" category, as mentioned in the Engines Archetypes dev diary. We've just barely started to see the tip of this with the addition of the SWERV, which currently renders the NERV near-obsolete. What are your goals with regards to balance for these new technologies? Is the intent for late-game parts to essentially replace early parts, or for lower-tech solutions to still be viable and necessary in the late-game? This also applies the other way: how do you intend to incentivize the use of certain "Way Too Useful" technologies to their full potential? For example, torch drives should allow us to reach other planets in a fraction of the time, but there is currently very little advantage to getting somewhere quickly rather than simply time warping through a multi-year journey. I'm also curious about how you handle balance with regards to approachability, depth, and realism. There have been many requests over the years for more complex and more realistic mechanics in the base game, including life support, radiation, more realistic aerodynamics, part failures, interstellar material, relativistic effects, communication delay, and more. Some of these could make great additions, while others could be needlessly punishing. Realism in mechanics can lead to more fun and emergent gameplay, but it can also discourage both new and experienced players who become overwhelmed by the complexity There's no consensus on which of these features would actually benefit the game, or how they should be implemented; ask 10 players which is which and you'll get 11 different answers. What are your goals for gameplay balance here, and how do you decide what additions will or won't benefit the game?

Things are, uh... Things are happening. Update soon, I hope.

...oh dear. Orman, what did you do?

Confirmed on Discord that notes will be tomorrow, and that the patch has indeed not been pushed!

I'm not certain what you're asking for here then. You mentioned interstage fairings, that's what engine plates are intended for. You attach a decoupler at the floating node, it automatically creates a fairing between the engine and the decoupler. You then attach whatever you want inside the interstage (like the lunar module if you're making a Saturn V recreation) to the engine plate's interior node. Once engine plates are fixed in the next patch this should be structurally sound without struts. Don't get me wrong, there are certain cases where I want to be able to use normal fairings for this so that I have more control over exactly where the fairing closes. I currently have a rocket that uses a combination of engine plates, tubes, and unclosed fairings to get exactly the shapes I want. I don't see how multijoint reinforcement could help here though since the fairing isn't actually attached to the part, unlike with engine plates. This would definitely also be nice, but it's worth mentioning that tubes are just another type of fairing. I think being able to attach parts to fairings could be a really helpful feature, but it would likely require them to significantly change the way fairings are set up behind the scenes.