Luis

It would also mean that the player base would be scattered across multiple versions of the game. This would make support, mods, competitions and discussions much harder. This is a flat out terrible idea.

http://www.cafepress.com/kerbalspaceprogram.855237191 There is also a mug that just has the logo.

Einstein's great insight was the realisation that there is no fixed origin in the universe. Everything is moving relative to something else. You can be stationary relative to a planet or a star or a galaxy but you will be moving relative to other planets, stars and galaxies and there is no way to say that one frame of reference is more correct than another. Space itself is expanding, like a balloon being inflated. If you draw dots on the surface of the balloon to represent stars, they will move away from each other as the balloon expands. There is no point on the balloon that is stationary, because the whole thing is expanding. In KSP, it is perfectly possible to reduce your speed to zero in your current frame of reference. So you can have a surface velocity of zero, or an orbital velocity of zero. But if you switch the display to show another frame of reference, your velocity won't be zero any more. You haven't actually accelerated or decelerated; you've just changed the reference point.

Not to mention that when the thrust from the sun is pointing in the direction you need to slow you down (upwards), the sun is on the opposite side of the planet or moon. In other words, it's night. Ok, I suppose I did just mention it.

1. Proper base building will probably come in a later update, but it is likely to be the kind where you haul components from Kerbin. RTS style base construction on other planets would be for DLC at best, I would think, because it takes the game a long way from its present focus. 2. Not possible due to the 2.5km physics limit. Even if you had something strong enough to support its own weight over hundreds of km, the game would need a new sort of 'on rails' modelling for objects connected to the elevator cable that were further than 2.5km from your current position. Also space elevators, once built, rather trivialise the business of getting into orbit and that's a very big part of the game, so I think it is unlikely to be added. 3. This probably won't be added as stock either, for many of the same reasons. A modded one might well be possible though. 4. Definitely not with the current engine. The scale of even the smallest planetary ring would be far FAR beyond the current physics and part-count limits of the game. 5. I can however imagine a day when Squad might add a stock, hard-code ringworld, possibly with optional base construction facilities. Since nothing has ever been hinted at in this regard, it wouldn't happen for a long time yet though. 6. The current engine doesn't support terraforming and the scale of the game isn't really compatible with what you want to do. Even with Minecraft ease of mining it would take a ridiculous amount of time to shape an asteroid. Flying one is completely impractical. See the Scott Manley video where he talks about this. 7. This will almost certainly be possible as soon as resource mining is implemented. Version 0.21? 8. This could very well be part of a dedicated base building update but it isn't possible right now and nothing has been announced. You could probably build an unpressurised dome from stock parts now though. And since kerbals don't take their helmets off even on Kerbin, and never run out of air, who's going to know?

The problem with city lights visible from orbit on the night side is that you can land wherever you want. While the orbital lights would be a fairly cheap graphical effect to add, making the cities and roads that produce those lights would be much more computationally expensive. The game already lags more near KSC than at altitude, any city that looked anywhere near realistic would bring the frame rates to their knees. Even if all the buildings were just procedurally generated cuboids with Kerbals wandering around randomly, it would be pretty slow. And frankly, I don't think a city like that would add very much. To feel like more than a blocky ghost town, we'd need buildings with textures, street layouts that made sense, cars with plausible routefinding, streetlights, road signs and on and on and on. This could end up being an enormous amount of work that would have a massive effect on frame rates and end up getting turned off on all but the very fastest PCs. And all this would be a distraction from the main business of KSP, which is travelling to OTHER planets and moons. All things considered, I would rather resources be spent elsewhere.

The point is not whether there is anying to show or not. The point is that the streams just stopped with no word of explanation or official announcement that they had stopped. As things stand we are left just to log in to Twitch on a Monday night and hope for the best. If streams have been cancelled until further notice because of unguarded comments over things like DLC, then why not just say so? If it's something else, tell us what. I really hate this whole "nothing's wrong, it's all just business as usual" line we are expected to swallow. The abrupt drop off in community interraction definitely isn't normal and by refusing to say anything about the reasons for it, Squad are just inviting wild speculation (which I admit I'm party to) and eroding their excellent reputation for community engagement. Don't sulk Squad. Tell us what we did wrong.

If I had to guess, I'd say the nothing-to-report-yet-but-stay-tuned vibe we've been getting relates to some sort of overhaul in the whole community management strategy. Maybe they are switching away from Twitch to something else. Maybe they have a new community manager. Maybe they are going to do a podcast (yes please!). I agree that the media blackout lately has been rather strange. I don't buy the argument that the server crash made them too busy. Nor that they are ramping up to 0.20. Before 0.18 was released we had a 48-hour stream! This is something else. Regardless of the reasons behind all this, I don't think it would have killed them to post on the forums and on Facebook to say that there was no stream that day. Simply not showing up without a word just kills enthusiasm and discourages us from checking in on a Monday evening.

Resource mining is coming in the next update or two. That will give you an incentive to set up mining bases or fuel relay stations that you can use as stepping stones to reach the more distant bodies with larger and more complicated ships. There are also "anomalies" or easter eggs tucked away on many of the bodies. You can either attempt to discover these for yourself through manual exploration (very hard) or use the ISA Mapping mod to locate them and then design lander missions to reach all of them (still pretty hard).