Wjolcz

Cool concept. Very sci-fi.

You guys do realise there's that one snail that actually somehow consumes some sort of metal and then uses it to form it's shell/spikes/whatever it has on it's back. Don't know it's name though. Now let's assume there's a species that also does that. The sqiod people use the rocks, migrate somewhere else where such snals live, stone one of them to death and see those metal thingies can be bent and sorta joined together when put in the heat stream of one of the geothermal volcano-thingies on the bottom of the sea. Early metallurgy! Bam! Found it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod

Yup, if I were to think of an underwater civilzation/any kind of underwater intelligent life I would also say octopus-like, or cattlefish-like creatures. They are super smart, can learn from each other and communicate with each other pretty well too (using skin colours and shapes like cattlefish). Not sure how precise the tentacles can be while manipulating tools, but if the evolution goes the right way I don't see a reason why shouldn't they be used in a similar way the hands are. I'm thinking about a set of natural events and disasters that could boost such creatures' intelligence. Similar to a way the humankind had to work their way through some obstacles in the past in order to advance. How to transport your stuff in an easy and reliable way? How to get to another island? What's the best mixture of resin to keep those two pieces of the tool together? How to scare away other animals? Stuff like that. Let's not forget about food too. You can't really cook meat underwater. Unless those alien octopi eat only plants, or grow bacteria. If so they would perhaps be more of tree (or rather algae) huggers. They would be less agressive which could leave to better cooperation attemps between tribes, or something. I could really sit here a long time making assumptions and creating theories, but the truth is we will know once we find such civilization. And this post was getting long anyway.

The heck? Why? Did SQUAD sign some sort of dark blood pact with Gaben?

Is transfering to Steam not an option anymore? I bought the game from the store, way before it was available on Steam. Everyone who has ever used the KSP site to download the game knows how the things go: you try to update, but because everyone tries to do so the servers crash, the forums go down and it's like this for the next week or so. I experienced all that and as soon as it was available on Steam it didn't take much thinking process for me to transfer the key to get a faster and more reliable download source every time a new update comes out.

How can you even question something like that if the Orion Nebula IS VISIBLE WITH THE NAKED EYE!!!

BTW I'll update the OP tomorrow to make the idea clear and easy to read by listing all the discussed features and their simplified descriptions.

How much cheaper would the ISS be if it was launched using the Falcon 9 rockets only?

Ooooooh, OP! Consider yourself lucky and me very jealous! I was out on my birthday (6th of April) which was also the original launch date scheduled for the SpaceX Dragon. I was so sure I saw 2 bright dots near each other in the sky, but then came back home and read about the cancellation of the launch ;_; it was probably the solar panels on the opposite ends of the station that looked like two separate sources of light. Anyway, if you're also interested in seeing the Iridium flares I recommend you to download the ISS Detector app for Android. It's a really nice and user-friendly app which also isn't very heavy, which is a plus. A thousand times this.

Maybe that could be solved with the contracts, or rather missions and strategies. If you accept a kind of mission that suits you best, then you get the funding. After the completion of the mission you pick another one you want to complete. You get the money only by accepting the mission and not for completing it. How well you completed it is scored with the amount of rep (only!) you get for the completion. The strategies could influence the way you want to spend the money. For example: You activate the "Tech Demonstrator" strategy. That makes a bunch of "demonstrator" missions to show up. You pick one and are given funds to perform a test of, for example, ion engine in LKO. The money goes into the research of limited amount of ion engines. If you succeed you get rep, if you don't, the money is spent on research but you get nothing (unless you somehow saved some of that money) and you are left with a bunch of poorly put together ion engines. The time to develop such tech would of course vary based upon how much funding you got, the level of your R&D and probably some other factors. And you would have a limited amount of time to develop those technologies. If you saved a bunch of money from the previous research program you would finish faster, thus getting way more rep than if you spent more time on it. There would also be other strategies like "The shuttle program", "The sounding rockets", "The Munar program", "Space station research program" and probably a bunch of others. Each of them would have a set of missions bound directly to what is the goal of the strategy.

This is the original original post (what tater and superstrijder15 liked): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OK, so I wanted to edit this post just to make sure it's easier to understand and a bit clearer. Please do keep in mind that I have never played RO and probably am rediscovering the wheel here. I'm a bit disappointed with how the career progression works. What I would like to propose is a more realistic approach to it (at least I hope it's more realistic, not like I've ever ran a space program, or something): THE SCIENCE There are no science points. You do the experiments to understand the world, raise your rep and unlock some parts. EXAMPLE: To unlock the Whiplash you need to go supersonic first and perform a bunch of related experiments, like the temperature experiment and the pressure experiment. That gives you the understanding of the high speed atmospheric flight and unlocks the ability to research the Whiplash engine. EDIT NOTE: Here's something really good from @tater. THE REPUTATION This is what influences your annual money income from the goverment/HQ. If you do what the space program HQ tells you to do (missions) you get higher rep. If you don't, the rep slowly drops down and you have to find alternative ways to fund your space program (through space mining, selling the tech/patents you've researched, or something like that) EDIT NOTE: An alternative way of how to deal with the (somewhat problematic) reputation decay by @Mr. Scruffy can be found here. EDIT NOTE: There's also a few other ways proposed and discussed by @monstah starting somewhere around here. EDIT NOTE: There's also this by @The Optimist. EDIT NOTE: There's also this by me! THE MONEY Preferably granted by the government/Kongress/HQ every week/month/year, or something like that. This is what you use to research and build parts (and vessels, of course). Research takes a bit of time. Building the parts too, but less. EXAMPLE: You pay the R&D to build you a new experimental engine (let's say it's the Whiplash again). You paid them X amount of money (+provided with important data from the experiments tied to supersonic flights) and it was enough to build, let's say 5 of them. You need to run the static test first (by activating the contract) and then you have the access to those 5 engines to stick them on whatever you want. If you want more then send some more money to R&D and they'll make sure you get them in time. THE MISSIONS (previously called CONTRACTS; now directly tied to PROGRAMS) This is what the HQ wants you to do. If you don't, then it affects your rep in a negative way. If you do, the reputation rises. EDIT NOTE: Ideally there would be a mission editor in the Mission Control. The player would go into the Admin Building first and pick a program (based around a planetary body). Once that's done a new tab would show in the MC in which the player would design their own mission by picking the body first, then the biome (high/low orbit, midlands, lowlands, etc.). After the places are chosen the player would have the ability to pick what kind of actions (land, take a sample, perform the X experiment, bring a tourist, build a station, build a base, etc.) he/she wants to perform there with each action having its own reward. THE TECH TREE This only shows you the history of your tech research. Not exactly a tree anymore. EDIT NOTE: Ideally, the tech tree would look like the one in War Thunder. Each branch/path would be themed (electric with electric, jets with jets, wings with wings, etc.) and have it's own start. I believe such tree would offer more flexibility to what kind of playstyle a player prefers (if he wants to go full atmospheric/SSTO branch then he should be allowed to do so and still progress by investing money in the tech he/she needs). THE R&D This building is used to unlock and build you parts. The tech tree is no longer a single tree and more of loosely connected groups that don't influence each other. There's also a semi-realistic progression of parts. You need certain science data to start the research. EXAMPLE: To unlock the Vector engine you need to go through a bunch of steps first: Terrier -> Reliant -> Swivel -> Vector Same for parts' sizes: Tiny -> Small -> Large -> Extra large EDIT NOTE: Something like this, where each branch has its own start to it and an independent progression based on the type of parts the branch has. THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING (the STRATEGIES are now called PROGRAMS and directly influence the MISSIONS you get to do and cost nothing to pick) Would be used to influence the annual income. The programs influence the missions you get to do and are directly tied to the final goal of the program you chose. The missions would have more or less realistic progression and every completed mission would unlock a new harder/more complicated one to do. Each program has it's final mission which is also the goal of that program and marks a major milestone in the history of space exploration (permanently rises your annual income, unlocks more programs, or sth like that). Each program has its own tab in the Mission Control, which when selected expands and offers a whole set of missions/objectives that can be selected (a few of them at once). EXAMPLE: You choose the 'Interplanetary manned vessel research program' which gives you extra annual funding, but also harder missions to complete, like hauling a bunch of crew members to a set destination, or building a research station around/on some other body than Kerbin. EDIT NOTE: @tater has the right idea about how programs should work here. EDIT NOTE: Here's a thread about strategies in case the results of the poll are any useful. Another way to picture it ("The Career Loop"): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I hope I have covered most of the ideas and concepts I originally had in mind. As always: tell me what you think and what could be changed. BTW the whole thread is worth reading as this post doesn't incorporate everything that's been discussed here, so go give the guys some rep too if you like their ideas. It's also worth noting that when I was creating this thread I was not aware of the Strategia mod and the way it incorporates the programs there. That's why both concepts differ a bit but also have some things in common. I guess that just proves how good they would be to have in stock. EDIT NOTE: An alternative and somewhat simpler version of this can be found here.

I wouldn't mind if the tech tree was completely removed and instead we would have a system that would work more or less like this: To unlock a part you need to perform a special set of experiments. For example: Use the rocket engine to go supersonic, measure the air density and temperature. Go back to base. Then wait for a few days and get a new shiny engine called "Whiplash" from your R&D. First you get a limited amount of them (they are produced 1 per week, or something), but after the R&D upgrade the production rate increases. Some parts need the experiments, some parts would need a usage of a lower tier part of the same type (Tiny size -> Small size -> Medium size -> Large size, or short fuel tank -> medium tank -> long tank. Same with engines: Terrier -> Reliant -> Swivel). I would prefer this instead of the science points tbh. IMO such system would actually force you to explore other planets (go to Duna to research a new engine that would suit it's atmosphere best) than just grind your way through the tree by biome hopping on the Mun.

YES! I've been wanting a scenario creator for a long, long time. Ever since the in-game scenarios and tutorials were announced I hoped we would get someday something like this. I think it could work like this: 1. You start with a map view and select the body you want to work around with (just like in the tracking station) 2. Build the ship/station/select a kerbonaut and set the orbit for it/her/him (drag them just like you drag the manouver nodes around). 3. Go to the vessel creator (VAB+SPH but with the skybox around instead of VAB/SPH scenery) and decide where on the orbit it should be. 4. Set a bunch of pop-up windows connected with the events. For example: if the player goes below a certain altitude/enters or leaves SOI/gets close to another vessel the time warp stops and the window shows up with whatever you've scribbled in it. Imagine the potential such scenario creator would hold! The community could create tutorials of their own and newbies could faff around while learning the game at the same time without the need of Hyper Edit.

I don't ming if GUI stays. I actually didn't notice it until half of the battle had passed. Don't think the navball is not needed though.

I'd rather have Xenon as an alternative to the contracts and strategies.

Ok, so I see my post got quoted a bunch of times and since I can't edit them because editing doesn't work for me on mobile (hooray for the new forum! yay!) I will just say few things: There's only one place in the universe we know about that has life. Comparing procedural generation for KSP and No Man's Sky is a bit silly. It only makes sense if you can go and visit more systems and not only one. If KSP had more solar systems then I have nothing against procedural generation outside of the main one. Playing procedural KSP would be like staying in the same room but with missplaced furniture. Playing No Man's Sky is like going out and to a whole new room full of completely different things. Except you can come back if you don't like the paint. Exploring the same place, but with misplaced elements would get boring really fast. If you make changes then either make them stay or expand.

Nah. Random generation is not a very good system for flight sims. At least when it comes to planets. Every time the solar system would have to be proceduraly generated the game would have to make assumptions that, for example, the gas giant near the sun won't ruin the orbits of other planets/moons/potentially destructible asteroids. The game should more or less represent the real solar system (even though it's scaled down), because there's only one place in the universe with life in it and we don't know what planets in which places would influence the life in the habitable zone. It would be better to have the planets in different phase angles every time you start a save. We kind of do know how other planets might influence life in the habitable zone, but I hope you get my point. I really like what @tater said about discovering the actual properties of atmospheres/gravitation of the planets through the usage of probes and actual science. I think that would work very well. I was also refering to discovering other planets when more are added. Some sort of Saturn analogue and beyond. That way the telescopes would be actually useful when tracking them. The ones within Jool's orbit are close enough to be visible with the nakes eye.

@monamipierrot your post started off good, but then I saw the part about discovering the sun and stopped reading. If we want discovery we need telescopes. And not only to discover the bodies around the solar system. I want to track actual sources of strange signals, like pulsars, look at different types of stars, hunt for exoplanets and take sweet pics of galaxies and nebulas with the actual scientific facts and data about them.

There used to be Kerbalizer, or whatever it was called. I don't think we really need this feature. Not like it adds anything significant to a game about space flight. Maybe hair could differ a bit, but I'd rather prefer it if the dev time was spent on things we actually need.

"Veeltch" is how you spell "Wilcz" in polish. I decided to use it instead of "Wilcz" because anyone who is not polish has no idea how to properly spell it and I never know when they call me out on the voice chat in WarThunder.

I saw the ISS flying about 3 hours ago (21:06 CET to be exact) and I think I saw two dots of light instead of one. Is something going on there? Is Cygnus undocking or something, or was it just my eyes playing tricks on me?

1st question: it's probably more of a matter of atmosphere density than the expansion. If the probe hits the atmosphere and it ends up being too high it might damage some instruments. At least that's what I would assume so. 2nd question: probably day/night temperature differences + atmosphere rotation?

Better name it Earth I. Just like Titan is Saturn VI. Now do this for all of the moons in the solar system. Naming problem solved. Jokes aside. Luna sounds best and most international.

I have a feeling this whole dV storm is going to influence the next update in a major way...

I'd rather if you could directly interact with them. Touch the monolith and zoom! You're now somewhere else in the solar system! Of course it shouldn't work with every monolith you encounter.