macegee

Since you're working on a new UI, would that mean that we're getting long-awaited delta-v/twr/burn time indicators and other essential things like that? Me and all my close KSP fellas been waiting for this for a really long time.

You see, that's the problem right there. SQUAD distanced themselves from the player base and resorted to one-way conversations. The ones that doesn't say anything much except what's MAY happen in next month or two. And now they're doing AMA. Looks silly to me.

"If/when feature X would make it into the game" questions are off the table probably, right? So I don't think there's gonna be anything interesting to ask them about. SQUAD stopped talking about their plans for more than one update away (and even this is a big IF), don't have any public roadmap and anything. What is there to ask? In the mean time I keep dreaming of extensive VAB/SPH/in-flight spacecraft information panels. It's 0.22 already, guys, c'mon! There's docking, rovers, science, and still no delta-v/twr/burn time/orbital parameters info windows. This is my part of Ask What Your Players Think here.

Awesome news, guys, keep it up! But what about unmanned probes? Why not giving some love to them science wise? Unmanned sample return, more probe-sized instruments? Please?

You should definitely check my project. Look for charts, especially temperature ones. I haven't finished writing a summary (I did write about this survey in our Russian blog), but most of the info is there in those charts. https://picasaweb.google.com/113746879661497233526/KSPBasicPlanetarySurveyXXI ADDED: Oh, and here's spreadsheet with all the data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArWRtW_GQue0dG9uM0lpMTV2WmU1VWItNzh1UUFuMlE&usp=drive_web

You see, Squad guys think that they shouldn't put pressure on the new players with a lot of stuff, like with lots of parts for example. Or any other information on the screen, like advanced tutorials and info readouts (said delta-v). Unfortunately, lots of parts isn't what new players are being confused with, it's the lack of said information. I didn't play orbiter before KSP, so unlike you I didn't know what delta-v was until like 1 year after I started playing. But at day one I was at least being able to calculate easy stuff like TWR by hand, on a paper (like out-of-the-game guides told me to). Took me some time, but I was being able to. Then I realized that I HAVE TO install mods just to show me information I want the game to show me. And it's really sad (cuz I want vanilla game). So I feel ya. And the thing is, you should better send this to their e-mail (available on the main site), so they actually have to read it. More people would keep telling them that this game has to give player more basic and advanced information, the better. Maybe some day they'd get that it's kinda important for some and should be made a priority.

A year ago (maybe during KerbalKon or a usual devstream) they said KSP is going to be under development for at least 1-1.5 more years. Stuff could've changed since then, but I don't think this period has been increased substantially by more than a year (they succeeded on Steam after all). This means that 1.0 release version will come out not later than the end of 2014 or mid 2015, probably, or even earlier. As you could see, each update cycle is now takes 2-3 months, plus some time in between for holidays and planning and conferences and all that stuff. So that makes 4-6 updates for year max. Which means that 1.0 won't be an actual 1.0, but something more like 0.3 or so.

Well, yeah, it's too obvious, so I didn't take it.

First I thought of something like - Agency of Controlled Explosions [ACE], but then decided that I'm not so much into explosions and went with basic Aerospace Research Bureau [ARB]. And no, I didn't like SRB either (with space instead of aerospace for naming sake), I'm not into SRBs.

Gee, why spoiler stuff like this?

Oh, I feel you. And I've got something to add to this. Compare how transmitters and experiment containers work - you can't close the latter (casings) without destroying results, if I understand it correctly. But you can deploy/undeploy transmitters. So when you're trying to re enter with your experiment results, all of them have to be opened. And it looks silly. Also, I love "more realism" mods out there. Tried Deadly Reentry some time ago, but then thought that reentry heat doesn't change anything much since you don't even have to return anything back. I try not to use too much addons for compatibility and stability reasons, so I decided to stop using Deadly Reentry pretty quickly. But now when we gain more by actually returning stuff from space, reentry heat seems an important aspect and I'm thinking about getting DR asap. On a side note, I don't really feel that reentry heat is a good idea to have without proper atmospheric drag model. If you know how reentry is actually done IRL, you would understand. So uhm.. yeah.. I can relate to this problem. Oh, yeah, payload fairings.. Those are lacking too of course.

Oh, didn't know that. Not so obvious and not perfect solution, but still better than going to Space Center first. Thanks!

Should've brought us a shortcut to Tracking Station from anywhere we want instead.

Thank you for this mod. In my latest mission I was able to find different layers of Kerbin's atmosphere. And I still haven't got to Eve and Duna yet. Click to enlarge Would be nice to see it develop further in future. Save on crash, maybe additional options or instruments.

Any news on the subject, guys?

How about these two? https://www.360cities.net/image/ksp-mun-0-21-1-crater-rim-01 https://www.360cities.net/image/ksp-mun-0-21-1-crater-inside-03

I hate and love mods at the same time. Because they're not stock, and gonna turn into vaporware at some point or another. So I use mods, but don't get attached to them, and don't have persistent game save throughout game updates. This would probably change after 1.0, when mods will "settle down".

With the old schedule, yes, some of the NA people were not able to watch it for some reasons (work, mostly). But still there were some of them who were able to. Plus the whole Europe. In contrast, now it's just NA centered and nobody else can watch live. Not because everyone else is at work, but because they're asleep. You can't watch it from sleep, but some may watch from work. What's better?

Why not bring dev streams with the old schedule? It was okay time for both sides of the world. Now the whole Europe would be forced to watch replays, losing whole interactivity.

One can only guess why is it so hard to announce this on forums here, officially. And tell us when to tune in. Reminds me of old days of KSPTV when where wasn't even an official schedule published anywhere.

Yeah, it's really uncool to be left in the dark like this. Have to google stuff myself. Here's what I've got: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/08/27/twitch-announces-huge-pax-prime-schedule.aspx Sunday 9/1 PDT: 3:00pm – Kerbal Space Program (Squad) If I understand correctly, it would be streamed on twitch's main channel (twitch.tv/twitch). 3 pm is apparently in pacific daylight time (UTC-7).

Well, I don't see it that way. Even if so, game currently can tell you lot of stuff about celestial bodies, such as atmospheric scale height, escape velocity, and even standard gravitational parameter. But it can't tell craft's delta-v or it's TWR. That's "top-heavy", and has nothing to do with being "Lego Orbiter". And if Maxmaps or other Squad guys are still reading this, can you clarify on this "more ingame info" matter?

Stock game doesn't give you much useful VAB/flight data. Actually, game is terrible at telling you things. I used to calculate stuff like mass, TWR and delta-V myself, but it's quite tedious task to do manually every time. So I switched to MJ. I hate using mods, but I'd rather use them instead of guessing/calculating things by myself all the time/use old and informationless flight UI. And I don't understand why devs still haven't implemented any of these info windows for VAB/flight, while saying that the game is "top-heavy" and needs more basic stuff.

With new update out, had to play stock and once again I felt that it's so unnatural to play the game for me without having delta-v/mass/TWR/burn time VAB information. Yes, it's been interesting to calculate it by hand in my newbie days, but it took quite some time, and doing it over and over again just doesn't feel right. The most important thing is that devs have said multiple times that they see current KSP as seriously top-heavy game and want to do more basic stuff. I'm sure everyone would agree that showing such an important spacecraft info in VAB is exactly the basic stuff that's missing from the base game. So I don't get it, why is it still isn't there? Why people have to use mods or grind through the math just to be able to know their craft parameters?

I think static pictures look really cool, even tho it needs some tuning (in terms of color and sizes). But when I watched it in motion in all those videos, it looked so weird when LODs are being loaded and you see craters and their edges appear magically and somewhat glitchy. That looks seriously bad IMO, especially in low orbit when moving fast above the surface. Hope it can be fixed in future.