r_rolo1

TBH Nova i was mostly refering to twitter ( where maxmaps posted this intel in the first place :/ ). 140 chars make a tall order to make a coherent argument ...

Nah. The current "community manager" of the dev team is someone with experience in moderating twitch chats and this actual forums, so he has tough enough skin to deal with this kind of discussion. And notice that the flak they would ( will? ) get on twitter, reddit or others because of this will be far less articulate and coherent than the one in here ...

... and because of that, they don't post intel on the forums, making that people don't go there to get intel ? Talk about self fulfilling prophecies

Well, I would be happy if they simply linked all the intel they deliver by other channels in here. The forums have a specific section called "Daily kerbal" that could be neatly used for that, but that currently at best has a new post every two days and that normally does not have the really juicy intel... That is simply a matter of linking up stuff, really. 5 extra min per day would suffice :/

Tz, tz ... dV on rockets as a function of the crew ? Really ? *insert facepalm pic* Really, I could live with that being a function of the on ground crew ( the place where you need more to know the dV of a rocket is in conception, not in flight ) and thus at best being a function of the R&D or the Mission control upgrades ( "Now we have newfangled calculators with logarithms, so we can calculate how much whooph a rocket has !!!" ). But, of the crew? That makes as much sense as having the dV of a rocket being a function of the pilot skill, and no one would suggest anything so stupid as that, right ? ... Oh, wait ... :/

This I already posted in this thread when 0.90 got out saying that this was my first impression and playing after that only reinforced my impression. Especially in harder levels, money is comparatively scarce and science and rep are ridiculously easy to get in base game ( that is, without admin strategies ). And more, the buildings are also heavily inflated in terms of funds ... to a comparison in my current moderate+ dif game ( hard nowadays is not hard for me, just grindy, so I simply upped some knobs in moderate to make it more amenable to my current lack of time to play ), I can make a Mun/Minmus/Ike/Gilly ( choose one ) manned mission and return for about 40k funds ( I have some finely tuned rockets with SRBs as first stages ), while upgrading the VAB from level 2 to 3 is 4,5 million funds. In other words, making a VAB upgrade ( not building from scratch ) costs 1000x more than a RL Saturn V equivalent ...

Well, good to see that you sorted out the fuel lines issue ( TBH Harvester warned that the fuel lines code would have a revamp post 0.25, but he said that so much time ago that everyone forgot about it ). Anyway, good part and Merry Christmas

TBH I would not say that it flatlined, just that a new direction was needed after going in a wrong direction ( I'm from the opinion that the Shuttles the USA and the USSR made in the 80's were a terrible idea that made the space exploration go sideways for a couple of decades ). It is good to see that people started to worry about making better rockets again, though

Well, I can't say much on the overall balance, since I'm porting a 0.25 save in Hard to 0.90 ( so full buildings on and a nice 8 million cushion on the funds ), but I can definitely say that Hard in 0.90 seems to be VERY funds starved, much more than science starved or reputation starved . Well 0.25 on hard was the exact opposite, so maybe the devs overcorrected, I guess ...

It is actually a easy trick: 1) After you have your ship in orbit, you put a manouver node roughly in the place in the orbit where you will burn. As a rough sketch, for planets further from the sun than Kerbin, you can point from around 135º from Kerbin prograde in the dark side and from Moho/Eve around 45º from Kerbin prograde in the light side. Don't worry much with this, that will be refined later. 2) Open the manouver node and push prograde until the transfer orbit outside Kerbin SoI reaches the target planet orbit. Most likely you will not be even close ... if you are even better 3) Close the node and open it again. You might have noticed a "-" and a "+" buttons. Those add/subtract full orbits around the body you are for the node results. In other words , if you click in the "+" it will show the result of that node if was applied 1 orbit after the original node ( the "time to node" will also change, btw ). Click the "+" until you have a encounter or atleast a decent close aproach 4) Refine the close approach using the node or by moving the node in the orbit ( try not to move it much in there, though ) until you are satisfied with the encounter. This works relatively well with planets with low relative inclinations. For bigger inclinations you have to be more careful, but it can be done as well.

I beg to disagree I would say that maneuver nodes are pretty much necessary for anything interplanetary if you don't want to alt-tab out of the game to go to a calculator, given that the game gives you no other way of planning a maneuver ( that or you have to rely on save scumming, like it happened when the planets were added ). But for Kerbin orbit you can do easily with some good sense and some basic orbit mechanics results ...

Well, let's be honest: you don't need maneuver nodes for anything inside Kerbin SoI ( and this includes Mun and Minmus ) as long as you remember the basics of orbital mechanics ( and some derivations, like to have the Mun/Minmus on the horizon when making the transfer burn to there ). Interplanetary trips are a completely different issue, though ...

Oh, a answer from the maker itself I failed to notice that my suggestion would bring issues when the contract asks for something below X m :/ And yes, it would give very wordy titles if you have gone that way ... But "flying" describes a very specific set of situations in terms of other areas of the game, so it can't stay this way ( TBH when I noticed this I was "*edited profanity*, another batch of impossible contracts ... the launch clamps on the Mun were not enough already?", so I can only imagine the confusion of a newbie if it gets a situation like this ). Maybe it is the science tab that has to change names ( from "flying high/low" to "high/low in atmosphere" ( well, technically you don't need to be flying to get those, you just have to be there. Falling, flying or hovering make no difference, so calling it flying is somewhat a misnomer TBH ) , maybe? ) ....

Well, briefly back from the silence ( Christmas time is a time of a lot of work to me ... I still have to record two events to work until Sunday :/ ). Anyway, I read the google doc and while the work is going smoothly enough for a full volunteer work, I think that there is need for more subdivision of work. Namely I think that a subdivision of the film script rough draft into acts ( say, Prologue ( the 1784 expedition ), Act I ( the modern discovery of the structure ), Act II ( the arctic science station ), ... you get the idea ) in the document ( with slots for sound effects, script, dialogue, sets ... ) would help in the organization of the project, since there is no need for everyone to focus at the same time in the same scene and even less need to do the work sequentially ( especially because surely there will be scenes that need much more work than others ) If everyone agrees ( and if i find the time to do so until the end of this year ), I can format the current document in that way .... P.S. Nice work with the side, Aquaman

Game Version: KSP 0.90 32 bits ( not that it matters ) Situation: The phrasing "flying ( low or high )" or "in flight" appears to have two divergent meanings in 0.90 Description : As you know, in career mode ( and science mode where applicable ) until 0.25 ( including ) the "in flight" or "flying" meant a situation where you were inside a atmosphere ( as opposed to in orbit ( low or high ), suborbital or in escape trajectory ), like in "above surface inside a atmosphere" : This two images are from a ported career game started in 0.25, btw. Not that it matters ... The survey contracts introduced in 0.90, however, seem to have a different definition of "in flight": In here "in flight" seems to mean "above surface" ( note the lack of " in a atmosphere" ), that is far different from the above quoted situations, a thing that can lead to confusions ( note that both of the above contracts would be impossible if the meaning of "in flight" meant that the test was being done in a "flying ( low or high ) " situation, one because there isn't a atmosphere in Minmus and the other because you can't make grav scans while in a "flying" situation ) Expected, behavior: The meaning of "flying" and "in flight" has no ambiguities Suggested fix: Change the "Record X in flight above Y m" wording in the survey contracts for "Record X above Y m from the surface" . That removes any unclear meanings. Adding to that, maybe grav readings above x height could be removed if it is clear that the contract is meant to be made in a atmosphere ...

Good link. Bookmarked

It would so if the boulders were evenly distributed, but that is not the case in Minmus. The flats are basically devoid of boulders, except near the slopes that border them ( like if some of the boulders had fell of the slopes and rolled down ), a thing that suggests strongly that the boulders were in the surface before the flats were created. More, if the boulders were meteorites, they would have mini craters below them and the newer ones would have striations coming from the impact point

Oh well, putting the gravitational constant and absolute densities to the side, and assuming that comparative densities of materials are the same than in our universe, there are still major issues with the planets in KSP in terms of physical/chemical properties. The more clear examples are Eve, Minmus, Laythe and Tylo: - Eve ... where to start? The devs mashed some stuff in Eve that is very hard to reconcile. We have a very high temperature and oceans ... while technically they could be of water, other stuff in game or to be in the game soon point otherwise ( in game: Eve doesn't have rivers. That means it doesn't rain in Eve, a thing that points to a very high ebullition point liquid in the oceans, a thing that in Eve clearly excludes water, even if very salty. To be in game: Eve oceans will be harvest able for fuel ( that was sort of confirmed by in the last friday KSP-TV dev stream ) and according with the buried plans Harv had for the resource harvesting, the liquid in Eve oceans will be harvest able for fuel, but not for oxidizer, unlike Kerbin and Laythe oceans ...so , no water ). Others , like Scott Manley, suggested that it might be some kind of liquid metallic alloy ( Manley specifically suggested mercury, that was discussed to be used as rocket engine in the pat in RL ), that , while beating with other stuff in Harv's plan ( like Eve's oceans being a source for ( still not existent in game ) nuclear fuel ), is hard to reconcile with it being on the surface of the planet, and not in the core ( even if they didn't sunk to the core, there would be surely a layer of silicates in the surface of the planet ( like in all rocky planets in our solar system ), and those are far less dense than liquid metals ) More , Eve is purple . The surface is purple as far as we can see, the atmosphere is purple and the oceans as far as we can see are purple ( OFC that they can be simply reflecting the sky and surface color ... ). There is a couple of substances that are purple, but all have issues: colored organic compounds in general would have issues being stable in 5 atm and 98ºC ( not that they can't be, though ) but uniform purple would very hard to achieve in natural conditions with them, Iodine would work, but it would most likely react with any fuel source ( and more, iodine in water solution is not purple, so you can't have both and still have purple things in Eve ) and permanganates ( Maxmaps suggestion in last friday KSPTV dev stream ) both decompose in high temps and are strong oxidizers, a thing that doesn't link well with oceans that are a source of fuel Minmus: Let's put first what Minmus is NOT made of: Water ice While atleast the devs made Minmus not tidally locked to Kerbin in more recent incarnations ( to suggest that Minmus is not around Kerbin for so much time as the Mun ), the lack of vents and of signs of plumes ( added to the fact that Mimnus is not a comet ) basically excludes ice in Minmus. More, even if you want to say that it has ice under a coat of something not volatile, Minmus has rock boulders on the surface, a thing that makes absolutely no sense if Minmus was made primarily of ice ( the same reason to shun mercury oceans on Eve: relative densities ). Now, on what minmus IS made of: the flat surfaces are most likely some kind of silicate glass, indicating that Minmus was possibly starting to diferentiate ( dense stuff going down , made more easy by melting of the interior layers due to gravity and radioactive decay. Due to that, that process only happens in stuff above a certain size and makes the objects spherical ( the molten materials tend to fill the gaps ) ) early in it's history when something basically froze the process in the middle. What could do that ? that is a nice question ... that I don't have the answer to Laythe: Laythe is actually easy to explain for the most part. It is the most interior moon of Jool, thus the tidal forces tend to produce heat, heat that is enough to make the water in there liquid. More, it is not a water world because it suffered a major impact in it's early history that almost shredded the moon, leaving a almost hemispherical crater whose rims are above water level. It also has enough oxygen for jet engines to work, a almost sure sign that it has life ... On the stuff that doesn't make sense: First, Laythe has ice caps. If you think about that, if the oceans of Laythe are there because of Jool's tidal forces, it doesn't make sense than there are ice caps ( unlike in Kerbin, where the heat to melt the water comes primarily of the Sun radiation, thus making that the poles get in average less power from the Sun per area than the tropics ). Other thing to consider is how that Laythe has a atmosphere at all: if you look at the RL moon of Jupiter that is more closely in the situation of Laythe, Io, you will see a planet that loses atmosphere to Jupiter because of the same gravity that melts it's interiors to create sulfuric volcanoes. Laythe should had lost it's atmosphere long ago ( there is no sign of atmospherical replacement mechanism in Laythe ) ... unless both the atmosphere and the oceans are recent features of Laythe and that the planet once was covered in a ice layer and had no atmopshere ... like all the signs point that RL Europa and ingame Vall are. So maybe we had once a snowball Laythe Tylo: Tylo in certain aspect is the opposite of Laythe. Tylo has the surface gravity of almost 1g and, regardless of what is made of ( lead, maybe? ), it should have a atmosphere due to that. More, as it is far from the Sun and not that close of Jool, it should even have more atmo than Kerbin ( maybe even comparable levels to Eve ). But there is none :/ The only explanation I heard that made any amount of sense for that is that Tylo, for some reason, did not outgassed much in it's creation, thus there was never a atmosphere to be taken away, but that flies against the existence of ( spoiler in front : read at your own peril ) the Tylo cave. Caves are very peculiar stuff and only happen where there is erosion ( and no atmo and no liquids in surface = no erosion ) or as the result of tectonic activity, a thing that normally results in outgassing ) ( end of spoiler ). In other words, Tylo should have a decent atmosphere, most likely made of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, with most likely more that 1 atm at surface, but itisn't there. So where did it go ? Well, there is more wierd stuff in game, but most of them are explainable ( say, like Pol spires, that are most likely extrusions of liquid from the inside that freezes when it passes the surface ). This ones IMHO are the ones that are most hard to make sense of ...

Inspired by the announcement of the next years test of the ESA ( so far ) unmanned Shuttle IXV, I decided to make a mock up and test it in terms of controlled landing without chutes ( in here I'm being more ambitions that ESA that so far will not attempt a non-parachute landing ), consisting in launching it with a RT-10,then turn it to the runway and try a unpowered landing : I got to the conclusion that, while the thing is landable without chutes, it has very rough landings even at the low altitude of the runway. So, full deorbit tests are scheduled

Well, I just want to add a point that, while somewhat obvious for a lot of people, it definitely eludes a non trivial amount of newer players: Velocity is a vectorial variable ... in other words, unlike other variables ( like time ), to define a velocity you need a amount and a direction. Basically, you're going a x value of speed in a certain direction. If you want to change direction your velocity will change, even if stay at x speed ( in other words, going 60 mph to the front is not the same that going 60 mph backwards or 60 mph to either left or right ) ... and, in more rocket related stuff, the equations other posters have put here need to be used with caution if you change directions during flight ( and OFC, if you change directions without a exterior force acting on you, your dV will be diferent of zero )

No, it is not ( exactly ) a failure in the contract. While the game does not say that explicitly, most of the engine tests are actually "ignition" tests, where you simply check if the engine can start, and for that you don't need fuel tanks ( or even any fuel at all, to be more precise ). In other words, if the game is asking for a ion engine test, you are just supposed to activate it at the correct location and for that you don't need the xenon tanks. OFC that could had been made clearer ingame , but ... :/

Like I said in a series of posts on this same thread the moderation decided that would be better in the Suggestions forums ( and TBH, this discussion is Suggestions material ), that is simply because the devs chose to make a highly abstracted version of electricity in game. Notice that RL electrical devices also have shelf lives, that degrade in space even faster than their shelf lives in the home planet and that those are hard to produce in situ, not mentioning that all the ships have a baseline consumption as long as they are working ( for a example, the Rosetta probe needed to be shut down during one of their Martian flybys because the inbound battery had not enough capacity to provide for the needs of the ship during the time it would be ocluded by Mars ) ... pretty much like the idea of resources HarvesteR seems to have and that he is nixing. In other words, if the devs had modeled ingame electricity like RL electricity, it would also have a finite component, that would be the shelf live of all the electrical components ( batteries, solar panels, RTGs ... ), but the devs chose to cut that part out ... What the posters above are asking is that, given that the devs had no issue to make a heavily chopped version of electricity to put in game, why they are so reticent of putting supplies in game, that are at core the same feature than electricity, and worse , why they are giving a excuse for that that beats against their own previous work ?

Well, the game in the OP link does not present itself as a open access alpha version, so comparisons with KSP are somewhat unfair , right ?

Vagani, I have some experience in directing live streaming events and also some ( admittedly less ) experience in film editing. If you think I can be useful, feel free to PM me ( notice: due to the above, I might have times where it might be hard to do actual work in this , or even to be contacted. Caveat emptor )

@NecroBones Those are very nice SRB and something that the stock game actually needs ( it looks like the devs never heard about the Polaris and all the subsequent naval US missiles... ). In fact the only thing that I can point to that collection is the lack of a 0,625m SRB ( for upper stages or very low weight payloads ) , but the ones you make look good and seem actually stocklike. Also, those R5 are really sweet looking