razark

Something other than SSTOs. Seriously. I gave up on trying to get one to work, too. The next update is bringing a lot of changes. It might be worth waiting until then to try and figure it out. Anything you learn now is likely to be meaningless in 1.0.

One can always hope. However, the way manuals are these days, two days is plenty of time.

A manual?

I have my alarm set between two radio stations, so it sounds awful. Otherwise, I'd just go back to sleep listening to the music.

When funding gets cut, missions get cut. When missions get cut, you have leftover hardware. Also, some of the stages at KSC and Huntsville are not actual flight hardware, but were ground test articles. The Saturn V at Johnson is made up of flight hardware, however they are not all from the same Saturn V. Edit: Hunstville has a horizontal display made up of test articles. They also have a vertically stacked replica. KSC Has a bogus first stage, and the two upper stages are real. JSC has stages from three different Saturn Vs. There are also surviving stages at the Michoud Plant in Louisiana, and in the Smithsonian. The later was the Skylab backup.

If she starts out in the crew roster, it simply means I only have to hire one new pilot after firing Bill and Bob. (The program starts with three pilots. Engineers and scientists don't get hired until group three. I'm really hoping that they add class to the config file, instead of basing it on the name.) Otherwise, she'll be just another potential recruit when I hire pilots.

Edit: The post by Vanamonde I was referring to has been deleted.

Yes, that does exist. The fact is that Squad did not address their users that were attempting to find out what was going on. (Well, they did. On another forum.) Aside from that, how long ago was that posted? How many new players have joined the community since then and had not seen it or didn't know to look for it? The fact that there were so many people asking about it shows how effective that communication was. Furthermore, reading through it points to the fact that Squad intended to no longer publish 64-bit versions in the near future. There is nothing in it that points to Squad, without notice, removing the version from people that already had it installed and were actively using it.

Releasing short little tidbits on social media? Ok, I suppose you could say there's an excuse for that. I don't think it would be out of order to also post that kind of thing in the forum. However, there are other incidents that don't make sense. The request for feedback or ideas on tutorials was made on reddit. Why not also make that request on the forum? That's the sort of thing that is likely to generate longer posts. The other major incident that I've seen recently was the removal of the 64-bit Windows version from Steam. Squad posted absolutely no warning on the forum beforehand. Squad posted no explanation afterwards. People were posting a high number of questions regarding it. I saw multiple threads asking why, what, etc. All of this was met by complete silence from Squad. Later, someone posted a link to Harvester's comment on the Orbiter forum that explained the version had been intentionally removed. If you were a new player, and were not aware of the way Squad posts information everywhere, where would you look to find out why your game wasn't working? I would expect that players would first come to Squad's official website to find out information about Squad's own game. It would never have occurred to me to start looking around on a website owned by someone other than the company responsible for the game, much less a forum for a completely different website. We aren't talking about a minor annoyance here. We're not talking about a release update that removed it. We're talking about players being completely sideswiped with the inability to run their game being met with what appears to be complete indifference from the company they bought it from. That's some serious Grade A male bovine fecal matter. Simply put, yes Squad's spray-and-pray marketing on social media might get potential customers' attention. But Squad also has a duty to their existing customers.

I understand, and have no problem at all with that. Hype is useful to sell the game. My issue is that they exclusively use other sources, and the information only gets posted to the forum if a user posts it. Very rarely is an official representative of Squad the one bringing the information to the forum. Yes, there are the occasional blog posts. Those are few and far between. There's also the Dev Notes every Tuesday. Those do get posted to the forum, but Squad also goes to the effort to post those to reddit and their dev blog. As a recent example, Squad recently decided to take down the 64-bit Windows version of the game from Steam. People posted a large number of threads here, asking what was going on, why their game wasn't working, etc. As far as I know, Squad has not yet addressed the issue on their own forum. Users located a post by a dev on the forum for Orbiter. How many Steam users were affected by this? How many of them would know to go to the other forum to find out that this was a deliberate action by the company, and not a bug? Why wouldn't the company address the questions posted to their own website? The issues have been brought up with Squad before. Their employee said that they understood, and in the future they would use the forum. For a company that is supposed to handle customers, some areas are severely lacking.

I have a theory. Squad is not a standard marketing company. They are experienced in the new style of marketing. They know how to get people talking about the product, by generating a lot of buzz through different social media sites. They get the word out, create a lot of hype, and get potential customers to keep the word spreading. They just don't have a damn clue how to handle actually dealing with customers once they hook them. They usually hand them off to a client at that point. You'd think after dealing with this crap every time they pull something like this, they'd have some incentive to learn.

If we're lucky, the information gets reposted here, but not by an official representative of Squad. Squad doesn't own reddit. Squad doesn't own twitter. Squad does own the forum. Ignoring the one channel they actually have full control over seems pretty damn stupid. If a new player is looking to find information about why their game suddenly stopped working the way they expected it to, would they be more likely to come to Squad's official web presence, or go to a third party source, such as twitter, reddit, or the Orbiter forum to find out what's going on? (Maybe they should hire a marketing firm to run some things for them.)

"What should I write in this email?" or "What is the policy that I made last week and had you explain to me twice already?" or "How should I do my job?" --Civil Servant making three and a half times my salary

No. Persons are, though.

Prize? What's this about a prize?

What's a "watch"? I haven't had a working watch in quite a while. I could never get used to wearing a wristwatch after I had a strap break, so I used a pocket watch. The battery died, and I never bothered to get it replaced because I've got a cellphone, so I don't really need a dedicated timepiece. Seeing as I've never had much use for a smartphone, a smartwatch doesn't appeal to me at all.

If Squad said "We're releasing this on February 30th", and then something comes up and the release is delayed, people get their panties in a wad, throw hissy fits, and start acting like spoiled little brats. Squad got tired of their customers not being able to act like adults.

Should we have ever made sharp rock flakes? Sure, modern technology like that makes skinning animals easier, but I can also use them to skin Joe in the next cave over. Maybe we'd be better off without all this high technology with the potential to harm people.

Not to mention reviews and things like:

Since the is the official 1.0 "release", I would expect it to be announced. It would make sense. (So it probably won't be)

I'd give a left foot if they'd actually put out a real manual. Not some sort of quick-start, "here's a list of menu options and a few keys" pamphlet thing, but an actual manual that explains how to do things in the game, walks the player through tutorials, and explains some basic orbital mechanics.

I have my LES attached to the top docking port of the capsule. It's in the staging group with the decoupler below the pod, right below the parachutes. My Abort Action Group shuts down all engines, decouples the capsule from the rocket, and ignites the LES. My 0 Action Group decouples the docking port and ignites the LES. Normal flight: When I no longer need the LES, I jettison it with 0. Aborts: Abort Action group, wait a second, hit 0 to drop the spent tower. Hit the spacebar to stage through until the chutes deploy. If I'm not using the LES, I'll put three Sepratrons around the capsule. They're in their own stage between decoupler and parachutes, so they help slow the capsule on re-entry.

Is a cow an herbivore or a mammal? Is it more herbivore than mammal?

True. Maybe someday Squad can get around to setting up their own site to host official communications, instead of using third-party sites. How the hell has Squad managed as a marketing firm when they seem to have the most ass-backward ideas about how to communicate with customers? If a user is having a problem with the game, and goes looking for information, do you expect them to go to the Orbiter forum, or the actual KSP forum owned and operated by the company that makes the game to find out what's going on?

I still want "KSP 1.0: Go Fever!" Although, the way some people treat it, how about "Kerbal Space Pogrom: An Amusing Solution to the Kerbal Question"?