Monger

I guess Squad has two problems that other early access games usually don't have. a) they have no professional experience in software development, let alone game development. Squad stems from a marketing company, after all. there is no existing framework for games like KSP. Even early access games usually only make small modifications to existing frameworks (like, rpg maker), and fill it with new content and game rules. The usual game today usually is no more than 20% development, and the rest of it concept and content creation. Which is usually a good thing, because this means artists that have a brilliant and visually stunning design idea for a game can still make it, even though they have little to no technical knowledge. You don't need a John Carmack today to create a beautiful game. Even though Squad uses Unity as foundation, Unity 3D has no native understanding of a 3D world where e.g. there is no single point of origin, no native orientation, no ruleset that at least some other game has adopted before (e.g. the floor is down, the game world has fixed limits, the game world is divided into static and non-static objects etc.). In addition to that, KSP tries to define a game logic that no one really has tried before. Somewhere in between unit editing like in Spore, a tycoon sim and a world builder game like Minecraft. There are very few space games (especially in the last 20 years), and even less space tycoon games or space simulations, and no game that really tries to combine these aspects. It was always extremely unlikely that anyone could pull off a game like this. But Squad didn't care, and tried anyway. They are far from finished, and maybe they never will, but like all explorers someone had to do the first step. Inventing a new game genre is not an easy task. The biggest upside here is: even if KSP fails for some unknown reason, anyone who tries to do something similar after that (even a "KSP 2") would need significantly less time, because there is already an example how to do it right and what pitfalls to avoid. Most games that founded a genre were technically speaking not particularly good. But the games that followed them were. (e.g. Dune -> Command & Conquer, Wolfenstein 3D -> Doom).

True, but it also a very bad idea to try to appeal to all tastes. There is a reason why mainstream is often considered as "mediocre". Every design decision has always pros and cons. Me, for example, I would never have agreed to an open mod support so early on. Your game's popularity may rise with good mods, but bad mods will hurt your reputation, as well. Even worse: you have to maintain compatibility for popular mods, even if it hurts your own development process. And you need to compete with half-baked content all the time, no matter what your own vision of the game is. Squad made a few decisions like that, that may be popular in the community, but actually hurt the game and them quite a lot. I admire the way they handle this conflict, I think they are doing an amazing job. As mentioned many times: the community is not a homogenous mass with a single mind. There are always different opinions and expectations. Squad can't and won't satisfy all of them.

This is one of the ugly sides of an early access game: a lot of players buy the game for what it might become, not what it is. Many consider this kind of an invest, and it is actually promoted that way. But this is not the case: you buy the game "as is". Squad made more than clear that there is no guarantee that there will always be a next release, and that all planned features will be finished. You shouldn't buy a game that you don't want in its current state. Because the game might never reach another state, or at least not the state you expect it to be. No matter what Squad does now, they will alienate at least a few of their customers: either those who want KSP to be more of a sandbox game, or those who want it to be more like a tycoon game. However, Squad stated early on that their goal is the latter: a mission-based "Space Program", this is why it is called KSP. This is what you bought, so don't expect Squad to change everything just because you want to.

Kerbin's atmosphere is also insanely thick, which results in an enormous amount of friction. KSPs jet engines are largely overpowered to counter this effect. It's already not that uncommon to get into the outer atmosphere of earth with just a jet engine. Also, ordinary kerosine is much cheaper than liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. That's why flying with an airplane is relatively cheap.

Only in KSP. In real life, air breathers are far more efficient, because they get most of their lift and their fuel from outside, so their loading capacity is far better. Also: reusable parts that land with chutes still need to be carried back to their launch site and put together for the next launch. Imagine a plane that would need to be towed back to the terminal every time it landed. SSTO naturally have much smaller downtime, and less maintenance costs. When the time is due, SSTO will probably replace most of the "usual" space traffic which is currently based on non-SSTOs.

SpaceX is working on SSTOs as well. In the meantime they try to build vessels that are at least fully reusable. As mentioned a few times in this forum: reusability is kind of the holy grail in space travel. The first one who achieves to build a true SSTO will cut transport costs by 99%, making space truly available for everyone (well, almost). The way KSP is currently built, it doesn't matter. But still: it is one of the most challenging and interesting tasks one can currently imagine in KSP.

True. I never rotate them correctly, either. I wonder why.

You are right: currently there is no reason why you should take the long and stony road of SSTOs if you can easily lift bigger payloads with much simpler designs. I guess SSTOs are kind of the holy grail of space exploration, because they would make space travel cheap enough that anyone can get there. Also, it is one of the few concepts in KSP that are not directly based on existing technology, but rather on the one that is in development just right now. Designing SSTOs feels a little like designing for SpaceX must feel like.

The faster you get, the more drag you got. Also: the higher you fly, the more your rudders need to work in order to stabilize an unstable plane. I got the same phenomenon: everything seems to work until you reach a certain height and speed, and then the plane starts to flip. When it whirls down into the lower atmosphere and looses speed, it slowly stabilizes again, and you can start to ascend again. At some point it will flip again, etc. pp. Take a look at your rudder control in the bottom left corner. Usually all arrows should be centered, but with an imbalanced plane the auto pilot slowly needs to tilt the rudders more and more - up to the point where it hits the limit. If you would switch off the autopilot just for a fraction of a second there, your ship will immediately turn over. And this is exactly what happens once you are trying to manually alter your course. Long story short: take a look at the rudders. If they have trouble either keeping the plane nose down or up, you have a balancing problem. Either add more rudders/flaps, or try to balance your CoL/CoM more carefully.

When you can't get higher than 23 km, you have a problem with thrust. Because the atmosphere gets thinner and thinner, your lift from your wings is not helping you anymore, but still adds weight. At this point, bigger wings start to become a problem rather than a solution. What you need is thrust, easy as that. If you have to throttle down your engines early on, then you have to hog more air. Air breathing engines are perfectly capable of getting to 2000m/s at 35km height. A this point, you really need only a little nudge to get into orbit.

Also, if you have the feeling that flying straight is unusally hard, try detaching, find another spot, attach again and see if anything changes. Centre of mass is apparently not the only criteria, the surface also seems to play a role.

I still hope that we will get expandable parts at some point, which can be retracted and expanded steplessly variable. This would make docking - and especially multidocking - a lot easier.

I had the feeling that deactivating SAS actually makes rotating a little easier. Give it a little nudge, deactivate SAS, nudge a little more, and stop it early. SAS was made to stabilize the middle axis of your vehicle. Since your center of mass is FAR above your RCS thrusters, there is no way to rotate the whole asteroid without shifting the middle axis. I haven't tried it yet, but attaching a second ship just opposite to the first one should dramatically improve your steering capabilities. Luckily, usually you don't have to move the asteroid very far.

Unity 3D is well known for its modular structure. Compared to other engines, there is very little in Unity you can't customize. The Unreal engine is quite a monster. It has a very well-designed pipeline, but it is meant to be bought as complete package. I wonder if something like patched conics would have been as easily possible in the Unreal Engine like in Unity 3D. The Unreal Engine is based on C++, and has its own scripting languages. Unity 3D is widely based on .NET, and is easily portable. Altogether, for small teams the Unity engine usually means much less overhead, especially if you are trying something very different. So, altogether: if KSP would habe been made with the Unreal Engine, it might have never evolved further than the conceptual phase.

He should probably take a look at the special educational version of KSP, and give feedback to Squad what he needs. Creating proper educational lessons with KSP is still an open topic, I guess.

If you would have to build your own plane from KSP parts in FSX, landing it would definitely be a LOT harder. KSPs aerodynamic model is really simple, and its parts are not really well suited for realistic flight.

You can manually repack them, i.e. get out, move your Kerbal next to the parachute, and right click. For unmanned probes it is probably easier to leave them cut, and user other chutes instead.

Well, I think there is some truth in that KSP currently has no proper "end game". 99% of my playing time is on or around Kerbin. Currently, the only difference between landing on Eve or Duna is the amount of Delta V. Let's see what the contract system will change about that.

The Orion drive is based on a proper deflector shield, and small, well timed nuclear explosions. Unless you install a deflector shield on the asteroid and launch multiple nuclear warheads, their efficiency is not really comparable.

I justed wanted a frame of reference. I would have mentioned "Gravity", but none of its logical loopholes had anything to do with asteroids.

I made the same mistake: launching into space on a default inclination instead of looking where and how the asteroid actually hits Kerbin. However, since I had to hit escape velocity anyhow, I just changed my inclination on a very high orbit around Kerbin, way behind Minmus. Luckily, inclination changes on high orbits are very cheap.

I just caught my first class D asteroid which was on direct collision course to Kerbin. Things I learned from that mission: "Deep Impact" was pretty stupid. You don't need nuclear bombs to move asteroids, you just have to catch them early enough and give them a little nudge. "Armageddon" was insanely stupid. For several obvious reasons, but especially that if the Earth vista is already filling the Asteroid's horizon, you are WAY too late. kind of shocking: even if you discover an Asteroid really early on (say, a year before impact), it might be practically impossible to find a Rendez-Vous point. My class D asteroid had a really benign orbit (same orientation as Kerbin's orbit, only slightly crossed), and still I just caught it like 40 days earlier (of 170 days discovered before impact) Generally speaking: finding a proper interception path is not simple. I am so used to more or less planar orbits, and that I can choose where to intercept my target, I really had to rethink how and where to intercept.

Seconded. Finally we can build multi-purpose sky cranes, and multi-purpose carriers. Now, if we could only get an expandable, stackable stock part, we could build real cranes.

True. Nonetheless: modern ion engines are actually quite powerful. They made some interesting steps forward in the last few years. However, newer ion engines need a lot of electricity, so you need big, heavy solar arrays. Maybe Squad decided that newer technology is not only more powerful, but also more fun to play with.