PTNLemay

Exactly. Companies think far into the future. They would rather sit on the IP for 8 years on the chance they can find a new studio down the road and potentially revive it. It's similar to why Nintendo is so aggressive stamping out piracy for old games they don't even support or offer anymore. Because maybe one day they will support them.

Yeah Micro definitely scratches that itch. Customizable, slap exactly as much or as little info that you want onto the screen.

I want to believe they do plan on bringing it back. They just haven't had time to balance that aspect of the game. Maybe. Could just be wishful thinking on my part.

From my limited testing, it seems that no. A Kerbal cannot go on EVA, touch a probe, and extract it's science. The feature may be added in the future (it was something you could do in KSP1). But for now you should add a docking port to all probes if you plan on having them collect anything useful.

So without this fix will the missions not work properly in the upscaled solar system? Is it something minor, like you need to reach a different altitudes. Or is it really game-breaking, like the target orbit appears under the planet/moon's surface?

I'm hoping to try this on my next playthrough. Has anyone tried running it with cheese3660's 2.5 upscale mod? Any big issues? I was also thinking of adding Were's My Crew Capsule, but that might be too many things at once.

I hope they plan on adding more of his stuff. I got all excited when the studio hired him, but so far they haven't added much of his to the game. I'm especially looking forward to those superb internal views he does.

Sounds fun. I'm curious about the new missions. From what I've seen this seems to be the first mod to add new missions to KSP2. I'm guessing it's mostly to reshuffle the start so the early unmanned parts make sense. Or have they been sprinkled throughout the entire progression of the game?

I think Elon stated that SpaceX's boosters (both Flacon9's and the Superheavy) could reach orbit on their own. But on the condition that they carry no payload. So, while it would be fun to try, it wouldn't serve much of a purpose.

Oh I really want to try the Godwit. I do love the stock NTRs, but it really feels like All-or-Nothing. Having a middle option will be nice.

It sounds neat. Did you create custom skins, or do they look like other parts for now? If it's a bay I imagine they must be based on the stock cargo bays.

Have the devs commented on whether or not they will be adding a stock science archive? I find it hard to believe that it's not eventually going to be added. The missions do give a massive amount of science, so in a way we don't "need" the old-school experiments. But still, for those who don't want to do the missions (or if they get stuck on some) the experiments are pretty important.

The default Kerbol system is roughly 1/10th the real solar system, if I'm not mistaken. So this makes Kerbol correspond to 1/4 the real one. So this deltaV map should fit? EDIT: Oh nevermind, it's not the Kerbol system, it's actually a quarter solar system. https://imgur.com/7BzhIan

Personally I do quite like the big bullseye, because when you are at that level of zooming (and this situation with an orbit intersecting an object but not yet captured by it), this is the most important piece of information. Where am I coming in and where am I leaving? I imagine (though this is conjecture on my part) that it also helps new players to clearly show one part of the orbit comes out, one goes in. There is probably a happy middle ground. Where it can be made smaller but still clearly convey the information it needs to convey. I have to believe that the craft types are on their to-do list, and they just haven't gotten around to it. Or at least, I really hope that's the case.

This only works if the spacecrafts are carrying Kerbals. For unmanned sample returns, docking is the only way

5m actually. So... yes your point definitely still stands. With conventional methalox it would be a giant lead weight. But still, I find it challenging to build large crafts with the hydrogen. I wish there was more options for the giant spheres. Like a version with more hard-points. They're tricky to use when you can only build off of them from their extremities.

Finally tackled the "Eyes of Dres" mission. To complete it I wanted to try out the new nuclear engines. I have to say... they feel like they're more trouble than they're worth. The deltaV benefits you gain from the exhaust velocity feel diminished by how little fuel the tanks can carry. Still, it works OK. I get close to 10 km/s once she's fully fuelled. I came up with a new belly-lander, the good ship Crusader. It's funny because, despite the name, the big balloon tanks make it seem very inoffensive. It looks more like a boat dock that was picked up and dropped into space. She can hold 5 Kerbals comfortably for the 2 or 3 year mission (depending on how badly I mess up my launch windows). I really hope this location is actually the Eyes. You can't track the eyes from the Tracking Station so I'm basically guessing. I'm not sure if it's something I did wrong with the reaction wheels, or if it's a problem in general with KSP2's SAS, but the ship was extremely unstable during the belly landing. The 4 Thud engines were OK for TWR, but even when I would manually guide SAS to retrograde and just tell it "You're here, where I need you to be. Just hold it." It would start to oscillate like crazy. So I essentially did the whole landing on full manual. Landed (after a few failed attempts). Fun fact, the big hydrogen tanks claim they can withstand impact speeds of up to 20 m/s. This is why I felt landing gear wouldn't really be needed. In practice this is not true at all. Hitting the ground at 5 m/s was enough to send half the tanks flying off. So I had to aim for around 1 m/s to ensure survival of the vehicle. Now I just need to go plant a flag and see if this is actually the Eyes of Dres. EDIT: Confirmed, we are at the Eyes of Dres. Mission accomplished.

Thanks for this. I love the cute down-sized scale of the default Kerbol system, but... it's very nice having the option to go bigger sometimes.

So... wait, biomes are not analogous with science areas? In most cases they must be pretty similar though, no?

It just feels like awkward game design. Like if you're playing a Super Mario game and you stumble onto Bowser on the 3rd level before you even face the first boss. What makes it worse is you can't dismiss the mission. It sticks around in the list nagging at you until you complete it.

Just to be clear, this happens even if the two ships don't dock? You can just rendez-vous them close together and the science data can hop over to the mothership? EDIT: Quick test on Minmus shows that this is not the case. Unless I'm doing something wrong, it seems like it's impossible to transfer science when they're not docked with one another. Thats damned annoying, it means every science mission now needs a docking port.

Related to this, what if the thing collecting the science is a probe instead? So for example the kerbals stay on the mothership, send down a probe to do all the science. The probe returns to the mothership. If it can dock then the science is automatically added to the mothership. But what if it can't dock? Can a kerbal go out and collect the data?

I got stuck on that one for so long. I was sure it meant you need your vehicle to start off with 200 tons, and eventually land on Minmus. I did that, and it never gave me the mission pass so I just assumed it was bugging. Getting 200 tons to the surface is ridiculous for how early that missions comes up. But thank you for clarifying.

Thanks! I'll test out the manual edit and get back to you. Yeah minimizing works. But I'm a bit OCD when it comes to having my screen space too cluttered. So I like to fly with only what I absolutely need. I understand I'm in the minority in that regard. Most players love filling their space with stats. So I won't hold it against you if you hold to your design decisions. EDIT: Editing the JSON works, you just have to be careful you don't remove too much. I took out the very bottom object/function and it made all the MicroEngi windows disappear from the VAB. It works now.

Minecraft does the same thing, it's a big pain. Do they use the AppData folder because it's faster somehow from the operating system's perspective? Why not just run the game from the same location as the executable? EDIT: @schlosrat I saw you mentioned the location for a Steam install. Where is it when one installs it straight from the website?