haltux

Considering they cannot sell expansion packs to their early adopters (and therefore probably their biggest fans), it would make much more sense to concentrate directly on KSP 2. I have no doubt that KSP sales exceeded their expectations (worldwide media coverage, was in the top steam sellers at some point, ...), they have no competitors and a massive fan base who will buy their stuff without hesitation on day 1, so not making KSP 2 would make no sense, at least from a business point of view.

Your mod sounds very interesting and I will try it as soon as I can. My feeling is that old versions of KSP had awfull ambient light, and that it was much better now, but everything that can improve lighting is a good thing, it is crucial for immersion. I would like to have your view on something else: my feeling is that brightness is much too low on parts which are lighted by low-angle light. When you look at the moon (in real life), it is almost binary, the limit between lighted and dark part is almost sharp, and the lighted part is almost homogeneously bright. This is not the case in KSP, neither on planets nor on spaceships, where all parts directly illuminated by low-angle light are very dark. I am no expert, but I guess it can be explained by the fact that eye perception is somehow not linear, and even a much smaller light does not practically appear very much darker, whereas on a computer screen requested values are somehow linearly related to the perception of brightness. I think having that properly rendered in KSP would make the overall game brighter while improving the immersion and realism. Dark parts should be dark and bright parts should be bright. What do you think? Do you think it should be difficult to implement such thing as a mod?

I am curious, why do you think the game is no "anywhere near finished"? My feeling, I hope I am wrong, is that the game is almost finished. The engine is not progressing anymore (I have lost hope in the integration of FAR or DR), and now they entirely focus on the career until they consider it as finished, and then they will release the final version. I am not sure what is the most sad: that they focus on the career which should not be the point, or that the career by itself is so disappointing, with this contracts that no one can possibly find interesting. Anyway, I don't believe any second that they still can make major orientation changes (and as far as I know they never did).

Let's be clear, I am not a hater, but I think contracts are currently completely boring and useless. I think the big mistake is to have built a mission generator. Random generated mission are boring, and even if they improve, they will still be boring. There is no such thing as an exciting random mission. We should get entirely scripted mission, that would be similar to forum challenges, but integrated in a consistant scenario, written by an actual, human, scenario writter. Considering how much time it take to do a complex mission in KSP, a "campaign" could integrate 10 to 20 mission, and new campaigns could be provided as DLC (free or not, that's not the point of the discussion). I think the mission engine is already there, what should be added are unique elements specific to missions (existing spaceships, artifacts are natural elements to investigate, specific parts to deliver somewhere...).

Hello, I am really upset with EVA controls : there is an up and a down, which are either planetary up or planetary north, and no way to actually feel like you are in space where there is no up and down, no way to approach any spaceship the way you want. Chase view should do the job, but somehow it does not work. Here is my proposal: "Q" and "E" should control kerbal rotation around an axis that goes from the back of the kerbal to the front of the kerbal (therefore perpandicular to your screen, considering you generally look from behind). The view should follow the Kerbal like it does for ships in Chase view. Unless someone give me a solution or tell me that it has already been done, I would like to develop a mod that solves this problem. However I have never developped any KSP mod. Could you give me your opinion on the development of such mod? Do you expect it to be easy? How much time do you think it would require for an experience developper that starts from scratch? Any comment would be appreciated.

Ooops.... I never noticed that one, as I have never been interested in planes... Thanks.

Could you please tell me which mod provides these nice side conical parts that are carying the nuclear engines on this screenshot? http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/595886233519050228/AB268EA2896F4198A55B74F76869A954630D2EC6/ Thanks.

OK, thanks to all for your answers. I did not realize it had nothing to do with far, but everything to do with the last update. I will try to apply all your advices.

Hello, I have been playing KSP for quite long time but I am new to FAR. I really love it, but I have major issue with radial decouplers and boosters. When I decouple my boosters, they tend to collide with my rocket and damage it. I can more or less solve the problem using separatron, but it is unreliable, and separatron tend to be destroyed during ascent because of FAR. Any help? Thanks.

Silly was probably not the best word, what I wanted to say is probably more something like "crazy". And I did not realize it was offensive, sorry. My point was that it is not nonsensical, I agree that "nothing is lost, everything is transformed", so theoretically you should be able to generate snacks with energy + various things rejected by astronauts. But to me it sounds convoluted and would most likely required very advanced technology, extremely complex and heavy equipment, and seems to be hypothetically doable only with a technology much more advanced that human or kerbal technology.

That looks very much like no life support at all. Electricity is not really an issue, so basically the gameplay would be unchanged. And generating snacks from CO2 with plancton in a capsule is just silly.

Do you have some insights about the point of view of Squad on all this? I mean, just like there are wiki pages with references on what we should and should not expect (weapons...), I guess Squad has already given some kind of explanation to the most obvious lacks. From all cited elements, the most obvious is aerodynamics model. Everyone can see that there is something wrong when you lift a bulky platform the same way as you lift a thin rocket. That should be here from the very beginning, and I wish I could know why the hell they did not at least implement a basic aerodynamics model (or integrate NEAR).

That was true as long as KSP was only a sandbox game. Now that we have a career, it does not work any more. The career is a game with a learning curve and a difficulty that has to be fine tuned very carefully by Squad. It's pricesely their job to make the game easy, normal or hard without mods.

When you show KSP to someone that does not know it, you are more likely to get comments like: "this stuff you are sending to space does not look like a rocket at all" than "cool, but what about mining, money and science?" And, as a side note, true aerodynamics would be insanely difficult, but aerodynamics that vaguely looks OK would be enough and straightforward to implement. If they don't do it, it is most probably for gameplay issues.

Most people who want reentry heat don't need something actually realistic. What we need is: - Pressure > 0 and spaceship not (capsule or spaceship equipied with shield) = BOOM. - Pressure > Y and Speed > f(Y) = BOOM. - Pressure > Y and Speed > g(Y) and parachute open = dead parachute (that one should have been implemented from the beginning) The consequence would be: - Going back to Kerbin would imply to enter the atmosphere at a reasonable speed. Typically no more than low orbit speed. - Aerobraking would not be for free anymore. It would require a shield (or a capsule) and a carefuly chosen perigee. No need for complex models, no need to make the game insanely difficult.

The problem with probes is that the way they are implemented in KSP is inconsistant. When you operate a manned vehicle, you ARE the pilot. When you operate a probe, you are what? Operating a probe in real time vaguely makes sense if you consider that in the game you ARE the AI that operate the rocket (which in my opinion is very convoluted). And it does vaguely make sense if it is a high tech probe with advanced A.I. embedded. If you are in career mode, you start at the beginning of the space age and your probe should be able to read sensors and store data, maybe to run basic preprogrammed control (run engine at a given time...), but certainly not to do whatever the player want. So what would make sense would be to give the ability to built probe rockets, but not to control them in the same way we control the manned vehicles. At the beginning of the tech tree we would have no control, or just basic pre-programmed time manoeuvres. Later you could send orders to the probe, that would not go faster than light speed.

Nothing can be more wrong. Please read "The Mythical Man-Month".

Most people don't care because they have no idea what difference it would make. But my intuition (which honestly could be wrong) is that n-body physics would significantly improve the gameplay. It would add some kind of uncertainty to the game, would make things less predictable and less established forever, would induce unexpected and surprising trajectories which will never happen with conics patch.

In order of priority, my wishes would be: - Solve physics issues (self-dislocating or self-rotating space stations, unrealistic rocket flexibility) - Realistic atmospheric behaviour (re-entry heat, shield, simplified but believable drag model) - Mission goals (gettings samples, use of scientific devices, search for primitive alien life...)

Everyone wants that but noone knows how much it would actually help. The main practical advantage of 64 bits is the ability to handle more memory. But in terms of raw performances in games, in is in practice rarely spectacular.

Ressource mining and ground samples collecting are two different stories. Collecting ground sample, or taking photos of specific sites, or installing scientific devices could be mission goals included in the career mode. There is no doubt this kind of things will be implemented at some point. Carrer mode requires some kind of goals, which cannot be only planting flags on the long term. Mining is something else. Mining is a way to get local supply from the environment for your ship during a mission. Mining would be cool but is not required even for a very advanced career mode. After all, real-life space exploration has not been involving mining so far.

I would put as rule 1 (and maybe only rule): 1. Don't do things which are obvioulsy irrealistic but doable because of the weaknesses of the game engine. The most obvious example being designing rocket with stupidly high drag. Excessive speed and angle for reentry beeing another one. And by the way, many things in MechJeb are fine, and not just delta-v info. If you accept using manoeuvre nodes, there is really no reason not to generate them automatically for Hohmann transfers, for example.

Sorry but this makes no sense, inconstitant planet position between players being the most obvious problem. There is a nice overview of all the potential approach to multiplayer here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35852-MASTER-THREAD-Multiplayer-Ideas-(Check-Here-to-See-if-it-s-Already-Suggested) The best approach to "real" multiplayer would be the "no time warp" approach.

Both advantages would be unsignificant, unless you are happy with spending thousands of years travelling.

It has been reported some time ago that at some point 6000 people were playing it at the same time on steam. You can make your own estimation from that. To me, it leads nowhere near 100000 units but I could be wrong.