Mr. Scruffy

Maybe Unity4 -64 is not stable with a game like KSP, but fine with C:S? Maybe it´s something like big spheres causing problems under 64bit resolution due to a higher number of long non-integers, which simply does not occur in a game like C:S? I am merely speculating, but i´d kindly ask you to consider such posibilties before calling anyone a liar, which you seem to strongly imply here.

Well, as said, for any probability-error (that´s a better term than ´random failure´) there should be devices/techs (some sort in-game investment) or behaviour that lowers said probability to 0. - There is a probability to get incinerated during re-entry, UNLESS you enter at quite a narrowly defined path OR bring heat-shields at the proper places (or both) - There is a probability (based on location - higher around Jool, lower in the inner system) to get hit by mini-meteorites, BUT you can shield your vital parts (or just all of them) against it, making your craft a little heavier and a little more costly. - There is a chance to crashland due to ´random´ terrain UNLESS you choose your landing-spot wisely. Another way to diminish this probability is to bring landing gear. See what i did there? I mixed existing stuff with things that might work in the same way, basically, and give players interesting choices (´I am such a pro, i dont need heatshields´, ´this is a cheap de-k´ed mission in LKO - even if at the off chance it goes bad before its completed, that´s not the end of the program - so i wont bring shielding´, ´i really suck at landing - i better bring really sturdy and stable landing gears...´ - to name a few possible ones).

So that´s why it´s called the ´Mün´ - after Münchhausen? (the guy who pulled himself out of quicksand by his hair).

And where did he do that? As far as i can read, he simply critizes the game. He does not even use the word ´dev´, or any placeholder for it. And he explitely states that he seeks his salvation in mods due to his dissatisfaction with the stock game. Now, if there´s a thread titled ´hooray for KSP´ (or something like that) - and in his opinion there is still much to be improved, it is his good right to speak up. After all, he´s not the one telling others to scoot off. EDIT (since no other post showed up, yet it´s a late edit): I´d say i am happy with what i got for my money regarding KSP and i wouldnt be angry or anything, if they announced rather sooner than later, that they are done with the base game and everything beyond requires new funding. But i sure as hell want developement to continue, as i think there is still a lot of potential untapped. If i had to pay another 20 (it was less the first time, actually) to make them continue to work on it for another 2-3 years or so, at the same pace, i´d be fine with that. Cause i do think there is another 2-3 years of work to be had here.

Hmm... if my landers serve as rovers, they still land on legs (that then get retracted so that the things gets on its wheels). Yesterday, i broke a wheel during landing despite this.

On the same token, i wonder how some things can make it even into a 0.x release. The buildings upgrades - does it really take thousands of players to see how unbalanced they are? Same goes for the strategies. It´s like the numbers were the result of die rolls. It was the same thing with experiments when they came in first - their repitive nature was so obvious, that i dont quite understand how it ever got released to the public in that state. I, too, love the game, dont get me wrong. But it´s like before every release they stop just one step short, when it´s basically just about tweaking some numbers. I do understand, that this is sort of paid-beta and that i agreed to it, when i bought the game early (and hell, did i get my money worth out of it!). But a little bit of testing in-house (and i assume they do this) should iron out the easy to fix but heavy on gameplay things before another release is made official. I mean, on my first upgrading the launch pad, i was like ´wow - this is unbalanced!´ - which was like 2 hours into the game - and i play really slow. On my first time doing science (back when it was first introduced) i was thinking: ´uh - how grindy, maybe a bit too realistic, here?´... I have never implemented any strategy in my program, though i could use some extra funds over some REP or SCI, because by even just looking at it, i figured, they are, guess: inbalanced and simply not worth it. So my guess for ORE is, it will either be too heavy to lift, too cheap to be worth it, or so valuable that you can upgrade your entire KSC after one go with it - something along these lines - on first release. Problem is (for the devs): If a new feature comes in a massively inbalanced state, as seems to be almost habitual at this point, you can hardly expect people to stick to vanilla for testing what is quite obviously flawed - and that for minor reasons, too, cause it cant be all that hard, after having gone through all the trouble of coding the feature, do get the numbers (parameters) for it at least roughly right. Hey, but after such a harsh sounding post, i shall not miss to thank the devs none-the-less for one of my favorite games of all times (playing since 83).

I agree - alot.

Has there been some secret change concerning this recently, btw? I dont think i messed with my stock 0.9 install (did another for mods, though, but that wasnt stable, so i deleted it again), but could swear that the small radial batteries once were massless (in 0.9) and now they weigh 5kg, each? Was i dreaming, or did things change a bit sometime last week or so (or the week before?), without any new version number?

I thought the CIA had confiscated that video...

Okay - one exception: I´d not fly any mission that required hopping around (multiple precise landings). Lost another kerbal (2nd - in the 2nd year of ´ironmanning´) last night. And i had specificly sent him on training missions, so he could repack chutes. He died on kerbin (what a disgrace!) trying to do a series of seismic surveys - the third (of four) had his VTOL/Rover-mix standing on unlevel terrain - a minor confusion during lift off, panic in his eyes, and that was that. It must suck to die on a mission, when your only task on it -your only reason to be on it- was to repack the chutes.

The statistics this ´fun fact´ is based on, must be so heavily skewed, it´s not funny anymore. It must count all death in which wind generators are somehow involved (like crazy people trying to climb them or whatnot), while skipping all cases of cancer that can not be attributed to nuclear power with 100% certainty (which is quite impossible). If done the other way around, wind generator would come out in absolute numbers close to zero (despite having been used for centuries - windmills are not exactly new), while nuclear energy would rake up hundreds of thousands, the first from bombs alone. Skewed statistics. They dont prove anything and 83% of people know that. To add something on-topic: Maybe there could be a ´strategy´ (´clean atmo´ or something) which would penalize you for using and dropping LVNs in kerbin´s atmosphere, but rewards you in some other way, when you manage to avoid it. Compromise between both sides.

1. Dont agree on the more planets part - that can wait. Rather flesh out what´s there, like in the ´more densely populated kerbin´ part. 2. I dont think that is practical. Nor fun. 3. Better not to have random failures, but more reasons for failures - which you can chose to counter or not. Like, say, mini-meteorites in space. Some sort of shielding will protect you (for extra weight), but you can forfeit it, and hope you are lucky, and the unlikely wont happen. 4. + 5. Tie into 3. What i´d like to see before 1.0 which might require some testing and balancing is time to play a role in many more ways than it currently does. Wont get into detail here, as not to derail the thread.

The ´supernova´ at the end of the video looks cool - maybe it should be the end game scenario? You have x years (adjustable by difficulty level) to, i dunno, get some kerbals to safety somewhere (even if that somewhere doesnt get shown explicitely)... or to stop it going nova (by some super science).

According to the link, Kerbin has 42 biomes?! Do i read that right?

The premament contracts are indeed already a class of their own, sort of. But they are being shoehorned together with the profane. Which leads to things like the player going without reward if hasnt clicked on the contract before doing his first mun-landing (and then the contract disappears, too, iirc - or doesnt come up, if it´s something that it is supposed to be out of your league or something). They should at least be listed in another tab (next to avaiable and active...) as ´permanent´ and not count towards the mission limit. The simple part is for the player knowing exactly where to look for what ressource by virtue of principle. You wont find science contracts - you have to do experiments for that. Only the permanent contracts give REP (but no funds). And so on... The fun part is to combine all three aspects in your next planed mission as you desire them. The part with the negotiable rewards for the contracts is a tad more complicated than it is right now, sure. But REP, not being directly needed for anything, should have two ways of being used (not none) in order to create choices (and make it a real gameplay element). And it really doesnt have to be more complicated for the player - just present a price as is, and put a ´negotiate´ button next to it, that allows you to trade some of your REP for a higher reward/advance sum, which players not inclined to do so, can safely ignore.

hehe - as much as it´s hated by some, i hope the game will never get rid off this unintended feature completely. I lost a Duna probe midway due to a bug. I just reasoned some mini-asteroid something must have smashed it. Things happen.

Well, it would clean things up. The milestones, you´d not have to select, you can just do them whenever. They are on a permanent list - some milestones might be hidden from it, maybe. One thing they´d all have in common: They´d all only give REP. As contracts should only give funds. As science should come from experiments only. It keeps things clean and simple. Need funds? Do a contract. Need REP? Check the milestone sheet or just try to do something you havent done before into the blue. Need science? Do new experiments. What i find redundant, is having to select these milestones from a list of contracts. Plus, if you do some of these contracts in the game right now, without having selected them before, (say altitude records) you simply miss out on any rewards for them. If you land on the mun, without anybody having told you to, you dont get any REP for it. EDIT: Another idea: Maybe contracts should not come with these star-classifications and not at a fixed price. Instead, they´d tell you what they want you to do and you tell them, how much you want/need (advance and on completion, with advance weighed more heavily of course) for that, trading REP for higher rewards. The ´strategy´ transfering REP to funds could then be based on time (x REP to y funds each z number of days - not x REP for y funds earned), emulating public funding (by gov or donations). With that, if you keep up a decent pace with it (and are effecient about it), you could live off of milestones mostly for quite a while, maybe, only having to do so many contracts, as to them not becoming repetetive and a chore. There would be basically two strategies. One more resembling a private company, and another more resembling an agency, with a continuum between the two. The first is to do some milestones (and possibly when they co-incite with lucrative contracts) and use the earned REP to earn more on contracts. This gives you income-peaks whenever you finish such a contract. The other way is to focus on the milestones, mostly ignore contracts, and use the earned REP to create a constant ´trickle´ (or stream, depending on you success and effort) of income via the ´strategy´ (=policy). Funding bigger projects, like the final building upgrades may still make you do a contract or two... Definitely final EDIT to this post: I can also imagine, that this makes the game easier to balance for the devs. For example, right now, there is an infinite amount of science (not too far) out there. As proposed, there would be hardcaps on both REP (well, it gets really hard to earn more after you have sent 10 kerbals everywhere) and SCI to be dished out by the game in total. I´d guess that it´s easier to distribute a finite amount of something rather than an infinite amount. Or: How much SCI/REP/FUN should this contract give? Well, reducing it to just one number by principle makes this problem rather trivial: Harder contracts earn more money (and nothing else), period.

The bulb with its legs placed higher (and ladders adjusted), to lower its CoM.

Boredom and bugs (and fear of heights) excluded, i probably would. I´d just triplecheck the desgin, instead of just doublechecking, before launch. I dont use escape systems either. The worst thing that can happen during my launches is a failed radial decoupling tearing of my central booster - in which case i just stage on to the next workable stage that can carry my back safely to the ground. And beyond the launch, an escape system doesnt help, does it? What good is it gonna do, if i didnt notice until landing - on minmus - that i misplaced a fuelline? I´d train a bit with the jetpacks, too. Jeb would still be alive in my ´ironman´-career game, if i had just thought about getting him out of the capsule, that had run out of fuel unexpectingly (fuellines) during decent on minmus, and used his jetpack to land, instead. And he´s my only loss to-date. Though kerballed activity had been limited to the kerbin system, so far. But Kerbin, Mun and Minmus do have a science station with an escape craft docked (3 Kerbals), in orbit, each.

But then again, there is nothing forcing you to do concurrent missions - unless they are in fact part of the same. This has nothing to do with effeciency but all with ´your jazz´, as someone here has put it. You can send out Jeb, Bill and Bob -back-to-back- and noone else for everything you do in the game. When they are currently going to Duna, and you want to visit say Eve next, there is no reason not to wait for their return and send them right off again, afterwards, for the next long-term mission (launching windows provided - and there will be one coming up after their arrival - guranteed. It´s just a matter of how much extra warping you do). How much time you warp through for doing this has no consequence in any way. EDIT: And yes: Offtime is irrelevant, if time passes for nothing else, either, except orbits, which repeat, by defintion. That changes a great deal though, if other stuff would be affecrted by time, too. Go figure: Time (as space) only matters as a relation - and that takes two. If you only have one object, there is no point in assigning any location to it. As is with time - if you only have one thing fall through it, it is meaningless. Add another, and bam.

A girl i lived with in a student´s [!] home and my mom didnt know which was bigger, the moon or the sun, until i told them. The worst thing is, that they didnt find anything wrong with that.

In career mode, you should start with limited funds, no REP and hence no contract offers. Your very first mission should be to achieve a milestone (that is like a permanent contract earning nothing but REP), so you can even get contracts. And then REP should be used as a currency. In the ´advance´ section of ***-contracts, there should be a negative REP number. EDIT: Milestones should be things like: - altitude records [1] - speed records in kerbin atmo [1] - flyby of body x (unmanned/manned) [1/2] - orbit around body x (dito) [1/2] - landings with probes [2] - returning x men who have landed the first time on y (with x incrementing after each succesfull last completion for any (y) different place) [body specific - mun 3, duna... 5] Numbers for rough outline of Rep each should give. And they should give nothing else and no where else should rep come from, except ´strategies´ (maybe better call them ´policies´). And contract should give funds and nothing but funds. And science should come from ´the field´, period. Keep it clean and simple. Milestones -> Rep, Contracts -> funds, experiments -> science. If a contract offers to pay you for a trop where you can still do some science and achieve a milestone (by landing more kerbals there than ever before - and returning them savely to kerbin, maybe) all the better.

Yes, i´d like a training center, too.

Ehh.. why not just integrate a training facility into the recruiting complex, to allow for buying xp? In Science and Sandbox (SaS) you´d start with 0xp for each kerbal, but training would be free in sandbox and cost some science in uh science.

For ground based, vertical, activities a rope with a stone bound to one end would do the trick. In high g-enviroments you can save on the stone. The complaint about ladders being so late in the tree is less about gameplay and more about intuitivity or inherent logic. Okay, keep the mobility enhancers where they are, but give us said rope with a stone (retractable ladder auto-pointing towards g) earlier. The problem is about having something to climb on beyond the main structure of the ship (past the engine below, for example) and solving that problem in a most basic way is trivial IRL.