Wjolcz

More like "the places all the parts are in are ridiculous and hard to deal with". The problem is these toggles won't fix something that is broken from the start. All I'm saying is that career is always either a purgatory or child's play. All it takes to fix it is a few simple things.

Why bother? Just cheat some science in instead of increasing your science rewards. Same result. KSP's pseudo-career mode needs to change. "Tweaking" science rewards won't help it. It never have. Yep. It's always either "grind your way through the ridiculous tech tree with half-assed manned science collectors", or "be prepared to have a hard time doing anything else". And people say career mode let's you try different playstyles. Yeeeeeeah, right.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with the stock tree. Now, which one of these antennae did I put on my Moho flyby probe...?

Well, that's the problem caused by science points being introduced in the first place. Ideally the experiments should be actually useful for the player. By measuring atmospheric pressure on Duna you would be able to predict the drag, thus the landing site of your spacecraft, or research an electric propeller that could work in Dunian conditions. By measuring the magnetic field of the body you would know if it's possible to survive on the surface, or not. But experiments in KSP were never meant to be like that. That's why the best way to repurpose the experiments would be to simply make them yield reputation. Let's take a real life example: MER Opportunity. It's made of metal parts (made by a Boeing team, I believe) and it's being driven by the rover team. It uncovers the mysteries of martian geology, so there is another team that benefits from it: the geologists. (I know it's oversimplified, but so is KSP). So we have three teams: the rover builders, the rover drivers and the geologists. Now, who benefits the most from what Opportunity is doing? That's right, it's the geologists. The problem is there is no geologist team in KSP. We only have the builders (R&D and VAB) and the drivers (the player in-flight). Because of the lack of "the geologists" the science system is oversimplified, which causes all sorts of balancing problems (science points used to research more parts in R&D). It's always either too grindy or too easy to unlock the whole tech tree, or you fly a half-assed spacecraft just to unlock proper building materials (parts). So to sum up: experiments are really useless in a game about spaceflight where you don't get to do analysis of the data. The devs introduced science points simply to give purpose to the experiment parts. The truth is you don't even need them to fly your spacecraft in real life, but you do in KSP (R&D research) which breaks the game and makes it really hard to balance. That's why there were so many science tweaks in the past and why the parts are being moved around the tech tree all the time (even in 1.2). If we really want the experiments to stay in the game it would be best to have them repurposed as just another reputation source, because using them to research more parts makes zero sense and is hard to balance. EDIT: Another way to achieve this would be introducing some sort of Science Team Building (I know it sounds kinda ridiculous) which would receive the data from science experiments and analyze it over time producing a steady output of reputation. "What does science have to do with reputation?", you might ask. Don't these scientific organizations, like NASA, JAXA, ESA or SETI like to brag about what they've discovered and what they are working on right now on Facebook, Twitter and other media? They very much do. It's just how PR works. You need good PR to gain good reputation if you are a national space agency. But this^^^ would be too time-consuming IMO. It's easier to just make the funds rep-dependent and science instruments yield reputation directly.

Basically Nautilus-X?

The way science instruments work is just really dumb. They should be active ALL THE TIME and gather scientific data ALL THE TIME as graphs. Science points need to go (to hell). Removing them actually fixes most of the problems with career. Performing scientific instruments should be rewarded with reputation, which then is calculated directly to money used to research the tech tree and vessel building. But that's offtopic. Anyway, science experiments should gather the data represented as graphs.

Yeah, it's true the ore-to-fuel ratios are oversimplified. I'd still like ore hauling contracts to be redone that way. They could always be simply ignored by those that don't want to haul it. I guess we're going offtopic, lol. Maybe I should change the thread title to "General contracts discussion" or something?

The only thing I could see any useful and cool is a Telemachus-like app for KSP.

True, but that's because ore is treated as a fuel source only. I think we've discussed this already, but IMO the "Bring X tons of ore from planet Y back to Kerbin" could be a fun way to simulate a space mining industry. They could be simply very rare, or maybe from only certain locations (like Dres, which isn't a popular destination it seems) to push the exploration aspect a bit more. ^^ This is just a random pic I found on the internet, but I think building and maintaining such haulers could be pretty fun in KSP.

We've had this discussion many moons ago.

I actually wouldn't mind hauling ore from different planets as long as the destination is only one: Kerbin.

I would like to propose a tweak for the contracts system which would get rid of resource requirements on stations or planetary bases. I'd rather decide myself if I need it or not. Making me haul massive tanks "just because" seems kind of pointsless. Modules and crew numbers (though sometimes a tad too high) are alright.

Something like this would be ideal. For now World's Firsts work just fine.

Bad news: Strategia is clearly not made for this whole mod setup. I'm on my way to perform a Moho flyby, but the "Planetary Fly-bys" strategy is not available for me yet (not enough reputation) and the "Moho Probes" strategy wants me to land 3 probes on the surface of Moho. I'm not doing that (land first, fly-by later? really?). Not yet, at least. So to sum up: Strategia is pretty much useless with all of this. I would have to edit the settings to make it all work well. And balancing it would not be easy, nor do I have time to do that.

IL-2: 1946 in multiplayer.

That's one way to deal with the ridiculous stock tech tree. I haven't tried that mod. Tried another one which does a similar thing. It was ok, but I prefer seeing where I'm going with my research.

Strategia has been finally updated! Wooooohoooo!

It's updated! Wooooooooooooooo! Finally a reason to upgrade the Admin Building in my career save.

You can't be a rocketry enthusiast without knowing a little about the German V-2 project. The engineering milestones achieved during the war were pretty amazing. The war itself? Not so much. Glad I'm living in times when aerospace agencies race against each other without any casualties and sacrifices needed to achieve their goals.

I can't say I enjoy the whole drama aspect which goes more or less like this: -Someone will die on this planet! -But you don't know that! Everything is good so far and we haven't even went there yet! -Yeah, but someone will! And it's for the future, ya know! The death scene in the second episode was actually pretty sad though. But yeah, it's not that good. It's a TV show, not a documentary (maybe kind of both?). They could focus on the actors and the story a bit less and talk about the actual engineering. Why the Raptor is so different from Merlin, what's the difference in fuel type and why it's important for ISRU and all that jazz. I think I would enjoy that a bit more tbh. "Eh, I'll watch it anyway."/10 Yeah, same. I think it could actually make it slightly more realistic and better. Also an opportunity to stretch the series a bit. The script writer was obviously not really interested in the whole "how to actually deal with this problem" idea. Or maybe he wasn't paid enough?

Fair enough. It's still a working hybrid engine that has never been built and functioned IRL (not yet at least). I think a nice compromise to have a VASIMR in the game would be to simply intorduce a nuclear reactor. Not true. The linear aerospike is also a good SSTO engine. Example: linear aerospike built for X-33. It never flew, but it was actually built and tested, unlike SABRE.

But if you say that RAPIER is not SABRE then the LV-N is not a nuclear engine, because it's heating is all wrong and it doesn't use hydrogen. Then why the hell is it so long and so heavy and looks like a nuclear engine? Well, the asnwer is: because it's a nuclear engine. By that logic RAPIER is SABRE, because it's hybrid. You can't say it isn't because that's simply not true.

My point isn't really that I want a VASIMR in the game, but more of a question of why the heck do we have RAPIER (AKA SABRE) if it's never been tested nor built before. As much as I would love to see the actual Skylon fly, there are other engines that already work and exist IRL and they could be included in the game. Yet they aren't, for some odd reason.

I just googled "Me 262 Mistel" a few minutes ago and thought "Wouldn't it be amazing to have a proper remote control in KSP? The first thing I would use it is probably a flying bomb." But then I thought "Aren't spacecraft actually controlled from platforms like the ISS on their docking approach?" So how it would look: you have vessel/aircraft/station and detach something from it. Now you can control that thing even though you are still focused on your "mothership". You would have a navball for each vessel and use the numpad to control it, or something. They would have their pro/retro/normal/antinormal, etc. autopilot marker thingies, of course. A little bit more automation for these things. You would put the antennae on the things you want to control and pick their channel (1,2,3...). That way even a few things could be remotely controlled at once. Would that be any useful? I'm thinking maybe things like the MAKS shuttle or Pegasus-like spaceships could be controlled easier that way? What do you think?

The RAPIER is really odd when it comes to thrust output. I often find myself wasting a lot of fuel climbing my SSTOs just to dive, gain a lot more speed, which makes the thrust output higher, and only then go out of the atmosphere for the orbital injection. And I'm not the only one who experiences it. I guess I could just add more engines, but more engines = more fuel and I want to keep my part count as low as possible. I know the RAPIER was made kinda awful just to not appear that OP engine "to rule them all", but come on, do I really need to perform the rollercoaster everytime I want to get out of the atmosphere?