jcraft

When Squad will start adding some possibilities of customizing kerbal looks (something basic - like in XCOM: Enemy Unknown for example) then I would be really happy to see addition of female kerbals. Just to make game more diverse.

This is looking truly good, but I wonder how will it play with things like orbital stations or planetary bases, as the proposed system seems to reward player for doing lot of small experiments in many different places, which of course is not corresponding well with functions of spacestation/planetary base. And one more thing. How exactly we going to unlock new technologies? For example - to unlock nuclear engine it would be required from player to: Option 1. Only hit certain science rating Option 2. Do something actually related to developing this new type of engine in addition to hitting required science level The second option would be of course much more preferable to see in game, as we don't want to see player unlocking new engines by studying Mun rocks, yes?

Yep, doing reset every update (besides small bugfixing patches). I just prefer to left "serious way" of playing for final release of KSP. Also I don't see a reason to make uber-complex multi-mission space program in sandbox when career mode is the place where true fun will begin for me .

And that's one of the reasons Squad is focusing on adding career mode right now - when new player is going start the game in career mode he is going to start small with limited possibilities and as he move forward game will open more and more for him offering more complex things - this way they can keep it simple at entry level but without sacrificing complexity of whole game. In current state KSP can be quite confusing for newcomer as it basically greets new player with "here's loads of parts and whole solar system to explore and almost no explanations what to do and how to do it... so go and have fun!".

Revert flight function was implemented especially with career mode in mind, so no - they not going to remove it in career mode as it was designed for career mode. Besides "Revert flight" its just a fancy name for "load autosave that was made on lauchpad/in editor" its not some button that magically rollbacks just that flight from universe, it rollbacks whole universe just like quickload option. You just loading a save, that's it.

On my notebook - infamous long loading problem and major drop of FPS (everything worked smooth in 0.20) On my gaming PC - also infamous long loading issue but when in comes to FPS game is smoother than in 0.20 And in both cases I have strange problem with performance in VAB/SPH - generally editor screens work smooth in beautiful 60 frames per second but when I look down directly onto the floor (or zoom out camera so far that I can see most of VAB/SPH floor). Boom! Sudden ridiculous FPS drop (from 60 to below 25...).

Yes, you missing something - they started really focusing on career since last update (0.21). They added crew management and player progress tracking system in it and these are two of the key elements of the career mode (especially progress tracking). And considering informations from latest KSP Weekly in next update we going to get research system implemented into the game (which is another one of career mode key elements), and this is looking like really important core feature, as almost every content that is going to be added later into the game (like resource mining for example) must be built around and work with it.

That would be also a really good addition to revert flight button - for now it is just a "Revert to launch" and "Revert to editor", why not add a "Revert to quicksave" and "Revert to autosave"? - it would be really convenient feature to have.

That's how you see it, but my point of view is quite different. I definitely can without problems send manned (kerbaled?) mission to Duna, a then get them back... but I wonder if I can do this within a certain budget limit. For now you have to consider basically two things when making a mission - "do I have enough fuel to make it?", and "aren't this going to explode?", when career mode kicks in you also have to plan your mission that way in which your space program not going bankrupt right away, because everything going to cost you (lots of) money. And there's also fact that in career mode we don't going to have all parts available on start, right now we can just slap most efficient stuff on a vessel and call it a day, in career mode you must unlock more advanced parts by research (and research will probably require some things to do before you can do it, not just click this button on tech-tree and wait until your scientists finish it), and this advanced parts probably going to cost you more... so yeah. I only see more challenge and fun here. Career is not going to be some kind of linear story campaign. At start most likely we not going to have lots of possibilities but as we progress game will start to be more and more open. You still going to decide on your own goals and how to reach them, just this time taking in mind other variables like budget and available parts. Yes, you are running your space program but you are not limited by anything beyond game technical limits and your imagination, and that's not a full space program experience from my perspective. I want to consider budget, research and my astronauts training and bunch of other stuff when playing this game - without it there its just not enough of space program in the space program for me:) Its not like Squad going to make whole career mode before moving on to other areas of the game, it just simply impossible. For example: you cannot have full career mode without complete research tree, and you cannot have complete research tree without implementing full set of parts into a game, and you cannot implement full set of parts into a game without implementing resource mining into game, and so on. In time to progress development of career mode Squad will have to focus on different areas of the game, it is simple like that.

Actual sense of progression? Additional challenge when trying to fit your missions into accectable budget, actual consquences of your failures - in sandbox when you strand a kerbal on Duna it's just "oh well, I just get another one and do a rescue mission" but in career failed mission going to have negative effect on your space program reputation... and rescue mission going to cost you more money. Yeah, sandbox is fun as it is but is like playing some Sim City game with crime rate and disasters turn off and also with unlimited budget - its fun to watch your city grow, but is much more fun doing it when you must consider money as a key factor and struggle with various of your city problems. Sandbox in KSP is like FPS with unlimited ammo, RPG when you start with best equipment and max character level, racing game when in the beginning you already have access to all cars - it all can be fun, but it never will be as fun as with some rules and limits imposed on the player. Adding economic aspect to the KSP is something that can hardly be defined as "dumbing down" quite opposite in fact - it is making game more complex and challenging, but definetely not "dumbed down". And just something that I'm observing in this community for some time - many people seems to forget (or maybe they just simply don't aware of it) that KSP was basically from start planned and build as a game where career mode is the main game, not sandbox - after all it is a Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Space Sandbox. Sandbox its just... let's call it a "basket" when everything made by devs is throw in and player can play with it without any rules and limits (just like creative mode in Minecraft). If you don't like playing with economic aspects, R&D and bunch of other stuff unique to career mode you still can play sandbox - it is not going anywhere. As for the lag issue - keep in mind that KSP is long time from finish, and there also problems of game engine (Unity) limitations when it comes to calculating physics. But I hope for a day when I can build 500 part spacestation, and then fly to it with my 100 part spaceplane and all within stable fluid 60 frames per second... maybe someday

Fact that Squad is focusing on career mode right now doesn't have to mean that they cannot deliver smaller things with it. We got reworked SAS in 0.21 for example, and from last minute - Mu wrote something about working on new editor upgrades in latest KSP Weekly.

I hope for it too, for big stuff like resource mining, proper aerodynamics and new planets (and star systems perhaps in the more distant future) I can wait... but tweakables would be a really nice thing to have sooner

Also career mode is a perfect way to made game more accessible for newcomers, right now when you're starting the game amount of content (just look at amount of parts we have right now for example) can be quite overwhelming for a new player, and with gradual progression of career mode, starting small and slowly unlocking new possibilities there is no such problem and game is far easier to get into as opposed to "here's loads of parts and whole solar system - go play with it" we have now. Maxmaps (Squad's PR manager) talked about it in myndflame interview on Twitch.TV (link - http://www.twitch.tv/myndflame/b/426248761), simply put - they want finish career mode first to make KSP more accessible to newcomers and then move on to adding big tasty content

Well, I still would want to see some kind of FTL drive in KSP. BUT - it would be definitely absolute end-game thing, at the end of tech-tree and very hard to get (for example to research it would be required to get resources that are only possible to mine outside Kerbal home system - some kind of "mustobtainium" ). And of course it should be implemented in some believable hard sci-fi manner, not in your typical "space-operous space magic drive" way.

Maybe not exactly in a way you described this, but "doing sciency stuff on planets and then unlocking more stuff with it" is a planned feature of KSP .

Yes, Harvester talked about that some time ago (if I remember correctly in his "Rethinking the way flights end" blog entry) - blocking player from using "Revert Flight" option almost for certain will be available as difficulty setting.

As it stands now basically all sound effects in KSP are just placeholders (and also in many cases there is simply no audio at all yet), but when Squad will move on to working on SFX side of the game I'm not going to be surprised if we going to get some docking effects.

Unfortunately I still get freezes with 0.6.1.1 when using default plugin. Singlethreaded version works fine. EDIT: Alternative plugin is giving me freezes too.

I just discovered two bugs in version 0.6.1.0 - fuel pipes connections no longer affect delta v value (in previous versions they did) and second problem - after a while of using, Build Engineer just stops responding to any changes and only way to make it work again is to restart game. Don't have anything agaist it - if its works fine... then why it should matter? Anyway, thanks for update cybutek. Keep up good work

Official developer livestream before 0.18, that was all I needed to understand how to rendezvous and dock. First thing I did after installing 0.18 was of course to try to dock... did it successfully on first try and to this day I cannot understand what is so hard about it everytime I hear/read someone saying that docking is hardest thing to do in KSP, I guess I'm some kind of natural docking-master

Terrain updates unfortunately caused some major performance drop on my notebook... on the other hand on my gaming PC KSP 0.21 works smoother than previous versions. As for the new SAS - just add some kind of "hard lock" mode for it and tweak it more, nonetheless I'm happy because in most cases new system works quite nice for my designs. ...also SAS-Equipped probe cores would be nice. Crew pods have it, then why not probe cores? I hope this just oversight not a design choice (fortunately is easy to mod, just in case ) But in general I really like this update (just kinda shame I cannot longer play it comfortably on my notebook).