Halsfury

Yes but you can't use them until the contracts come along The Idea is to incentivize the player to do certain things along non linear paths so that development isn't just a progression but is actually interactive. For instance, another group could cause accelerated development and unlock of the NERVA engine without all the intermediate steps, then as you progress along the regular tree (after the special program development closes), you wouldn't have to unlock that part. There may be other technologies which are purely program oriented, such as mining parts (which you wouldn't have a use for unless you had a contract) or space telescope parts, or even later in the game they might provide the ability to research and use expensive exotic parts like antimatter engines or what have you.

This may sound lame but believe it or not the one thing which would be the most useful to both species is economic knowledge. Groups developing in isolation have very different ideas, frankly I think the one thing which we would both want more than anything is simply economic innovations. i.e. ideas about how to bank, lend, buy and sell to increase GDP. Now that would be something which everybody would need, no interstellar civilization could get by without giving loans or doing something to make more money than there apparently is and if the interstellar species has something more efficient than Keynesian economics then that's a huge win in terms of instantly accelerating development across the globe. And maybe our humble economics could allow them to branch out and perform trades once thought impossible. This is the true wealth of any civilization since without $$$ there are no houses, no toilets and definitely no starships. Think about it, in ancient Rome you couldn't get a loan and technology crawled along as a result, and in the 15th century the Medici family opened the first world bank in Florence and all of a sudden we went from knights and castles to the Saturn V in just 500 years! Imagine if we could get another innovation as impactful now as the Medici bank was then.

Now my Duna sample return mission must go ahead before the 17th

I agree, you should have 6 special areas of development outside the regular development tree. Other groups (like the Kerbal government) can give you knowledge points which come with program contracts, these contracts will also open a development avenue for a limited time (since it is too costly in knowledge and resources for the space program by itself) These points can be spent on the special development areas while the contract is active but when it is over, the development of that tech tree closes down. However this is not limiting because a player can collect contracts together and then combo them in the building of vehicles and payloads so as to make use of all the special technologies, but without being OP. Instead this would let the player make a vehicle which is designed to be versatile in fulfilling multiple goals and then be rewarded with a science point multiplier for all the science collected in that mission (for the regular tech tree) depending on how many objectives were reached in a single mission. This would allow the player to use all kinds of cool technology and even to skip some of the regular tech and move non sequentially through the tech tree without feeling that it was some kind of hack.

Just asking

Ok Sure but surely you could incline Kerbin relative to the Sun, Kerbin itself would be unaffected it would manifest itself as inclination relative to the sun, i.e. Kerbin would not travel perfectly across the Sun's equator. At least this way Kerbin could have mini-seasons and eclipses would not always occur.

have to point this out, better would be in pericula intrepidus (lit. undaunted in danger) Don't trust Google translate because Latin has no word order which screws with Google's software, latin relies on the inflections at the end of the word to determine what it is in the sentence, whereas Google is designed for modern languages which have word order.

Does the Thread in my sig make me an epic engineer? if so could you add it please?

This suggestion makes perfect sense to me and it would make probe building easier since I can never get just the right amount of torque, it's always overkill and always too heavy! what I would really like is a part with a lot less mass doing the same thing because all the probes I build in campaign are massive cause I like to stick the Jr. Science bay on them so I need a reaction wheel but they are massive so I need a massive engine and a massive RCS system and etc. etc. etc. You see where this is going...

Hi Pretty simple idea here I remember that people have always complained about the frequent eclipses on kerbin and the lack of challenge of launching from the equator on a planet with no axial tilt. My solution to this came to me when I was travelling to Moho and I saw something incredible, Moho has a high inclination and its whole south pole was in the dark, I know that Moho, like the rest of the planets, has no axial tilt but the inclination relative to the sun caused seasons! So what I thought would be great is if Kerbin had a bit of inclination relative to the sun, that way, the moon wouldn't be able to eclipse the sun once every kerb-month and the sun, throughout the (kerbin) year would appear slightly more north/ more south from the equator. _________________________________________________________ Therefore my solution would be an ever so minor inclination change to kerbin (something like 1-2 degrees), to add to this one could add a 1 degree inclination to the Mun to change things up a bit. Also the Mun should probably be just another 1000km from Kerbin (so that the Mun is slightly smaller in the sky and hence will eclipse totally less often) Also I think that adding a touch of orbital eccentricity to Kerbin (around the sun) and the Mun (around Kerbin) would make the game feel a bit more realistic while not impacting starting players too much. With these changes, Kerbin would have mini-seasons and I think it would be more challenging without excluding new players since minor changes like this would still allow a player to easily get to the Mun's SOI

Behold! A Mun rocket! The R-7 Voskhod Luna-tik! Asparagus Staged, the exterior boosters all drain to the centre. It doesn't need you to research launch clamps, only fuel lines, The upper stage is enough to take you to the mun and even begin landing, and the final stage is extremely overpowered for a lander/ return craft but you must have half the fuel in the lander when landed or you are not going home! Also don't dare put heavy sciency garbage on it or you will fail, this is for sample return only, Instead swap out the payload for a probe and downgrade it by removing 1 fuel tank from the radial boosters and getting rid of asparagus staging and you will be able to send a probe with this lesser version Oh yeah (EDIT) it's also able to go to minmus

Just reporting something I saw, first though a background story... A while ago (eons), a person named teo posted this on OKB-1 but refused to share his secrets (or his craft file). How did he do this? Simple, if you take regular solar panels, parachutes, batteries and anything radially attachable and turn it around so that the face which would normally be stuck to the hull is now facing outwards Granted there is some other interesting stuff going on here but that's the basics of teo's station embellishments Also Teo has recently relented and has been kind enough to share his craft files here, so I forgive him http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52803-Space-stations-replicas-by-teo-%28NEW-Salyut-1%29

Really I guess this boils down to the fact that there is still a lot which could be added and tweaked by the devs I would really like to see a chart more like thereaverofdarkness suggested, something where each line of research is individual and they don't cross over like they do now, There should be a spaceplane research flow, a command pod research chart, a liquid fuelled rocket research chart etc. instead of all jumbled together in sometimes illogical sequence

Wouldn't this be a more fun thing to do to the Bus? besides all meteors look the same on reentry, even the bus shaped ones...

It shouldn't really be a choice though, since both of these represent the cutting edge of technology and the legacy of Apollo, without which curiosity couldn't have even got off the ground, NASA has the best ability to navigate in deep space of any agency currently and none are up to the challenge of filling those shoes. Really what this breaks down to is that the USA is frankly not interested in space exploration and would prefer to rest on her laurels since the war hawks in congress and the senate only care about rockets with ordinance as payloads. It seems to me that in America the old men in government are so puerile that they prefer B-2's to the noble efforts of spacefarers, as if bombs will help them when their supremacy is torn away by China along with the quixotic veneer that they are the "good guys", like some idiotic western.

Hi I know that the research tree right now is a reflection on the legacy of all the parts from the earliest game additions onwards but a more serious research flow ought to be implemented For instance, one can at the present time get wings but has to research the landing gear separately Come on! surely landing is the thing which you think about before you take off! Another instance of this is clearly to be seen in the lack of early game decouplers and launch clamps. So my proposal to fix this is that the starting parts include a gantry which falls away before liftoff, like the launch clamps but not as good, so that your early game creations don't fall over right away (It happens) especially when you get to the point where your making the biggest rocket possible with serial staging and it falls over right away. The gantries cannot support the rocket like the launch clamps but they can just keep it from falling over, the rocket would still rest on the ground but it would receive lateral anti-falling-over support from these, and not be able to hang off of them. As for decouplers, I think that they should be given first of all, since often, decoupling is what you wish you could do most of all. And as for the landing gear conundrum, can't we have those with the wings and not separate? It's not like anyone will attach them to a spaceship any time soon. Thanks Halsfury

If I am not mistaken Apollo 12 made it to the min but it was hit by lightning twice during ascent, they thought about aborting but everything checked out so they went to the moon anyway

Mind if I contribute this to OKB-1? I haven't put any new crafts in there for so long I would set up another section on the main page for your rockets beside the rest as is standard, and probably add a picture too since it would be a new craft

I have noticed that as you progress in the campaign, the devs have made it so that the game urges players to get out of the Kerbin, Mun system and pursue objectives deeper in space. I think that although this is the "endgame" intended -i.e. the conquest of space- the campaign is a bit to direct in this regard. The fall-off in terms of science points gathered is a little quick and players get forced into doing very difficult and long deep space missions as soon as the technology allows them. For me personally there should be choice in terms of how you want your space program to evolve, right now the campaign eats up too much time because in order to get science points you really need to get high Isp engines which can take hours of burn time to change course. This means that KSP can't be played effectively without a great expense of time, something which not all of KSP's player base has. To fix this, I suggest that the fall-off in science point gathering from one place ought to be less severe, this would allow players to refine their skills before being pushed on to the next conquest.

I was thinking that as opposed to life support with a complex dynamic, why not instead just have something like this; -Kerbals consume supplies at a steady rate -When you research a manned command capsule it has a certain ability to carry supplies -Supplies containing parts can be added to vessels (the first of these appear mid game and are 1 and 2m in diameter) -Supplies can be transferred between docked vessels This is very important to have since it would stop players in the very early game from building a huge rocket out of 1m parts and flying to Duna, collecting a ton of science early, and returning with a soil sample, all of which is impossible in real life and exploitative in the game Thanks Halsfury

Vostok 1 with tier 3 parts only, As the game progressed I found that the first stage could lift science probes to the Mun an Minmus, I still haven't unlocked the Mainsail engine because I've reached a point where science is getting hard to get. So far I've landed a probe on Eve and Duna, and a few manned sample returns and probe landings on the Mun and minmus. I did a Dres flyby for science points but found that I didn't have Dv for landing, so I passed it by at a perigee of 33km I don't have Nuclear engines yet so I am being kept in the inner system right now.

LT-2's have shocks now though but it works very well

congrats on getting this as a sticky thread Gus!

You would b able to hear the engines because u are attached to them, thus the sound would reach your ears actually if you were in a rocket's exhaust plume in space you might hear something before being turned to ash

Or just sample return? rather than random dust pickup?