Accelerando

He was fired a week or two ago, I think, around the same time PD got laid off because his position was being consolidated with Skunky's, and for the same reason.

I don't think it's very sportsmanlike to keep rubbing your no-mechjeb macho in Eric's face especially when he's already acknowledged his own piloting shortcoming.

If it helps, one thing to remember is that you should always have about ten times more fuel mass than the mass of the rest of your ship. What do you know, and don't you know, that you're struggling with?

That's a common EVA glitch. I'm not sure why it happens, but it happens to a lot of players every now and then especially in situations like yours or when your Kerbal gets crushed into the ground or underwater in some way. That it always seems to stop the altimeter on 666666whatever is especially curious.

I know this is an oldish thread now, but this is amazing. Hats off to you.

This is good advice. It is also extremely helpful when clipping fuel tanks and other parts inside each other, I have found.

It is the face you deserved to bear on such a shining moment.

This was my face for the entirety of reading this thread

yeah, i do. it's awesome

Laythe sounds like lathe, which makes sense since it's supposed to be a volcanic world, constantly spewing out material and forming new landmass, like a potter working clay on a lathe.

all of my vessels are named for food, like jalapeño

atomic motors aren't worth it for getting off the ground of a body with kerbin-like or greater atmosphere. for all vacuum operations they are actually quite good, especially on lower gravity bodies. the added mass is more than compensated for by the efficiency, although i do use chemical rockets for shorter burn times in lieu of a cost system that makes it less worthwhile

I would presume that people download stock craft files because they want to pilot something without having to install and keep track of one or fifty mods, and to see how others' vehicles are built and how they actually fly Not everything can be gleaned by looking at the pictures, and not everybody wants to always build another stupid scrap heap every time they want to play KSP to fly

Yeah, as much as I was curious about the game when I saw the video, I don't think I'm going to buy it as long as that Marek Rosa guy is in any sort of paid position on the dev team. Since Landge's post ended up among last on the first page, I'll just repost the quote by Hardenberg if that's no issue:

I don't know the person, but the quote is here: http://xkcd.com/893/ Hover over the image for a bit

Denying feminine characteristics entry to the game on the grounds that some might abuse them is not a step forward from relegating them to the kitchen. Either one affords what is at least generally considered the female zero agency in the matter - having portrayals out there that sexist people will have to deal with, even if they do end up abused, is a step closer to recognizing feminine as the equal of the masculine, than to have them shunted offscreen for whatever reason. In the former case, the user must own up to the fact that women exist, or at least can be a part of, their space program for whatever reason. In the latter, the user is not even provoked about the matter.

Whether or not it is heteronormative gender that is implemented is not the point I am addressing, Vanamonde. Female, xyquibit, whatever-in-the-world alien gender assignment or non-gender assignment you want to call them, my point is that the body type and aesthetics we generally consider "female"  whether or not that gender is actually a strict definition is not the point â€â€*are excluded from the game to the favor of the male. No matter if you consider the human picture of gender to have strict boundaries or whether you consider it all to be a crock, the fact is that differing body types  differing sexes, I suppose  exist, and no amount of ear-plugging is going to change the fact that the broad majority of each half of human beings bear a body plan that is noticeably different from the other half. In order to be representative of most of its players, KSP should at least give representation to the features generally ascribed to other half of the population, so that it covers a good portion of the spectrum. Currently KSP pays more respect to a body aesthetic most people seem to consider masculine, and they consider it as much with reason: the squareness of the jaw is generally an indicator of masculinity, the close crop worn by all Kerbals at the moment is generally worn by men on Earth, the body  though squat and not the most definite body plan ever seen, such squat, not-exactly-female body plans are usually assigned male genders. Obviously they are not man's men, manly men, but they are masculine. This in itself would not be such a problem, and this is the point I am getting at, if there were not such a negative response to the notion of implementing the "other" body type in the first place, or at the very least to make them more visibly androgynous. If you want an indicator of the popularity of this feature, why don't you look around you? Those voicing approval in this thread may not be a terrible lot of people, but then this forum is not exactly host to a terrible lot of posting people, although they all play KSP, which is at least a start as population samples go. We have a hundred, perhaps, who post regularly, and another few hundred who post fairly infrequently, whom I expect you would see less of in threads such as these. At any rate, the fact that female Kerbals are apparently such a recurring topic that anybody feels the need to "shelve" them up there with the suggestions of implementing multiplayer should be some indication of their being a wanted feature.

I'll enter soon. I've got a lander and mothership under development that go up as one stage. Does it count if the lander has a little Kethane module on the bottom that can detach when landed and putter around as a rover?

Vanamonde, I think that you are the one who is not stopping to consider very much here. That you seem to have either completely glossed over or are simply handwaving most of my OP does not dissuade me from that opinion. Slippery-slope rationalization does not count for reason, either, and belies a rather uninformed view of egalitarian sentiment here  implementing a new character model to show that some Kerbals have female characteristics does not mean that absolutely every issue need be addressed to the finest detail to be inclusive to most players. I think I addressed that in my previous posts, but I'll repeat it: The fact that gender continues to be brought up on a regular and fairly frequent basis should indicate its importance to a large number of players. I do not see threads about the importance of representing homsexuality in KSP, which does not model relationships between Kerbals on any level higher than occasional flavor text. Speaking of which, on second thought, there is another reason â€â€*which is that relationships between Kerbals have not been implemented yet, nor have indications of complex AI or at least statistical interactions which would be necessary to speak of such. If you truly do not believe that Kerbals need to have a gender, then it should be no issue if they have a range of different bodies to which they do not assign genders. The issue I am attempting to address is the issue of human relation  Kerbals are not only aliens, but essentially player avatars. The Kerbalizer if nothing else contributes to this notion. Whether or not you consider them to have genders does not make the fact go away that they resemble males to a considerable fraction of people, and even this would not be so important were it not for the repeated and at times rather vehement opposition to the idea of adding feminine bodies. KSP is, as far as I am aware, a game that purports to attempt to provide an enjoyable experience to most, if not all, of its players  its very human players. Whether or not aliens would be more or less likely to share the same conception of gender as ourselves is irrelevant to the discussion of adding female bodies and opening the playing field of names and aesthetics to the feminine. I cannot claim to have read all threads on the matter in their entirety, nor can I claim to personally know all users who wish for female features to appear in-game, but from what I have read I do not think that the majority have a coherent idea of what they want to such a low degree that any implementation of sex will spark off a forum-rending drama war on their part. Timmon's and Hayoo's art (I presume) on the subject are excellent examples of this  I hardly see any proponents of fem-Kerbals springing to the opposition of these drawings. Quite the opposite, really. Visible there is of the most obvious and probably most unanimously non-sexist ways in which humans can differentiate between sexes, that being the skeletal structure  which verifiably differs on a regular basis between women and men, especially in the face, which is extremely prominent on Kerbals. Round faces have been suggested many times as a manner in which Kerbals can be depicted as possessing feminine traits.

I am not asking Squad to change what has been done in the past, nor am I criticising them for allowing a personal project to grow beyond its original bounds. What I am trying to convey is that, whatever their original intentions, they now have a paid userbase to answer to, and a potential userbase out there in those who see KSP advertised on the front page of the Steam store, or wherever else it is displayed with the intention of swaying wallets; and even if they didn't, if they truly wish to create a space exploration experience that satisfies most of their potential buyers, then recurring gender threads are as good an indicator as any that there is a real desire for femininity of one form or another to be implemented in the game. Whether or not they promise to implement that is, of course, up to them, but that is not the point I am addressing.

Chris, a lack of resources hardly explains their unwillingness to add one more character to the game. We already wait months for updates bringing along features far more extensive than one character model, which, I might add, would clearly add something to the game for the significant number of users (and thus, source of profit) for whom this is important; and I might add that Dan spends his time on more than a few projects that are simply posted for display (ie Kerbal holidays, etc). While this does not take game implemetation into account, the release of the Kerbalizer and various other projects hinting at Kebal customizability at least indicates that they are willing to undertake projects that will add customizability to Kerbals themselves, however it does or does not affect game mechanics.

Temstar, Kerbals simply "not caring" is not really a step up from outright barring women from entry to the space program. Explicit or not, it is still putting women into the cupboard, so to speak: as suzin pointed out, it rings more of an excuse in the context of a game that supposedly seeks to be a fun space exploration experience for its consumers rather than a space exploration game laden with tones of exclusivism.

I've witnessed an annoying issue every time I read through threads on Kerbal gender. It isn't just the angry posts, although that's part of it. What's most annoying is the notion presumed by many that gender is meaningless or unimportant to discussions of the Kerbal characters and their species. I patiently await comments to the effect of "here we go," but I believe I have something different to offer. Now, to be sure: whether genders are added or not, one should keep in mind that the clothes we generally consider "gendered" are not necessarily going to be as much in the eyes of an alien speices. On the other hand, in relating KSP to a wider human audience (including women who most certainly play this game and roam these forums) it would go a long way toward demonstrating that this game is not meant to be a "boy's club" to do more than simply plug one's ears and pretend that because the game doesn't make explicit reference to Kerbal gender they are not, in fact, gendered. Gender, whether it is absent or present, is significant: it makes up part of the atmosphere of the game, which is at least as crucial to one's enjoyment of the game as the mechanics and story themselfes. To make an analogy, a minimalistic graphics set like the Code Page 437 employed by Dwarf Fortress and various other roguelikes contribute to the atmosphere of the game; that you have to translate text into visual objects in your head makes the game a fundamentally different experience from a game with 3D graphics, just as much as the visual polish we've seen in KSP of late has changed it from the releases of old. The praise heaped upon Nova and Claira as well as B9 for their contributions to the "Kerbal aesthetic" or at least continuations of it are certainly a testament to its effect upon peoples' time with the game. So gender is certainly a matter, and if the consistent recurrance of these threads and the often hostile-approaching-violent reactions at least some espouse in them are any indication, it is a matter certainly worth addressing. And I think it is undeniable that the broad majority of KSP players identify them as male, or at least with masculine descriptors, which really isn't very different in the the long view. Either way you cut it, excluding female bodies and feminine aesthetics and pronouns undermines the importance of the "female" while bolstering the male: contrary to popular belief, the pronoun "he" nor the concept of man are not, nor have they ever been, genderless, if only for the fact that few seem so eager to use "she" or women as genderless constructs. This of course does not apply if you are as willing to address Kerbals as female as you are to address them as male, but is that really the case? That is not an accusation, nor is it an order; it is just a question. If you do indeed wish to address Kerbals with impartiality to either gender, then it is necessary to be at least willing to speak of them in feminine terms as much as masculine. Personally, I don't mind if Kerbals have an explicit gender or not. However, I feel it is definitely necessary, if this game wishes to purport itself as more than a boy's club, for female bodies as well as what society tends to consider feminine aesthetics to be implemented in KSP. That doesn't equate to Hartman hips and lipstick babes, for those concerned. And whatever happens, players should at least own up to the fact that gender plays a role in this game. Even if you earnestly consider them genderless (I do) it does not mean that the issue is "meaningless" when discussing them.

Burn flag rebelliously.

Saturn has Enceladus and Titan, two of the biggest candidates for life in my view