Eric S

Sorry about that, I wanted to respond in agreement with you, multiquoted so that I wouldn't be multiposting, and then got into a bit of one-track thinking while replying to the other messages. So here I am posting again anyway.

Is Kethane as is fun? I use it, and I'll say no. It enables me to do things differently, gives me more to do on planets, but other than that first detection of kethane, that first drill that started bringing up kethane, the answer is no, it's not fun or exciting. Find a way to enable the same functionality, but in a fun way, and you've got a real winner of an idea, and I think that's what Harvester's looking for. And being lazy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with failing to achieve this goal on the first attempt. Noone. I've got no more right to tell you what you consider fun than you do to tell the devs how to design their game. I've got no problems with people that want to convince the devs to reconsider this decision. Where I draw the line is at people that rather than argue the merits of that decision make the argument that the devs are bad, unskilled, or otherwise defective just because the dev's goals and that person's goals aren't in perfect alignment. And I agree with you. In fact, if you read my posts on this in other areas, you'd know I'd prefer the resources they originally outlined over no resources at all. I've even said that this isn't the decision that I would have made. However, if the devs want to axe a feature because they don't think it's as fun as what they want their game to be, then I don't think that qualifies as lazy. And that was the whole point of that post, one that anyone that attacked the post based on wanting resources in game missed.

Saying "Don't be lazy." is assuming that the lack of desire to do the required work is the only hangup. How do you change the resource system so that it's fun?

Almost every streamer during KerbalKon commented on how much smoother the game played while recording, so I'd definitely consider waiting until then.

I can't speak for the devs, but of what I remember, the difference was that a full kethane operation could consist of a single drill, a kethane tank, a single converter, and then output tanks of each type. The chart itself had multiple gathering mechanisms and different converters, and in a few cases even had intermediate processing and results if I remember correctly. Needing multiple pre-conversion storage tanks would be a given. Depending on where you were gathering resources and what for, it might have been necessary to have two different gathering mechanisms and use them in separate locations. The devs spoke of simplifying the process from that chart prior to having the project suspended, which probably would have made the process feel a little more simple like kethane, but I'm not sure how far it went.

Using the default FAR settings, a craft would have to be pretty poorly designed to take more delta-v. My typical launches take about 3200-3500 delta-v, and that includes asparagus staged launchers. I've put landers/rovers on top of rockets that were by far the widest point of the craft, and never had one take more than it would in stock KSP. That said, it's very easy to create craft that are a royal pain to get into orbit with FAR, though they still probably won't take more delta-v than they would in stock. I'm talking about craft that inherently want to point retrograde or that you just can't convince to start the gravity turn below 20 km.

It's referred to as self-selection bias. If the 250 answers came from a random sampling of the KSP players, you could do some math to estimate the statistical relevance. In this case, on top of that you'd have to factor in: 1) The effect of having the poll in the forum, since I'm betting that most people that play KSP aren't even members of the forums (a safe bet, as it's been true for almost every game that both announced player numbers and you could figure out how many people were involved in the forums). The kind of player that won't sign up for the forum isn't the kind of player that would, but just more quiet. The forum residents tend to be your more hardcore, or at least dedicated, players, and that is no small factor. 2) The effect of people not voting and why. In this case, it's possible (but unlikely) that the real answer is that 95% of the forum population doesn't care about either feature enough to vote in a poll on it.

At 3.5 tons, I'm not sure it matters where they put it in the tree, most people are going to find it troublesome to use prior to getting larger tanks and engines. Troublesome, not impossible, so it may balance out.

I'm not exactly sure what to say on this subject. Multiplayer: Most of my friends that would enjoy KSP don't have the time for it. Only one of them really plays it, and I really can't think of too many missions we'd do together, we're a bit on different playing fields when it comes to skill level. I'd love to have him ride along on a few missions to show him how to do things, but I can do that just by setting up some live streaming software. To be honest, I'd be way to picky about playstyles when looking to play with people I don't know. To me, the multiplayer announcement mostly means that the devs will have less time to work on features I do care about. Resources: I loved the idea of resources early on. I used the Kethane Mod all the time, had major refueling stations in LKO, Munar, and Minmus orbits. By the time 0.19 rolled around, I was just using it for self-refueling transfer stages, and while I've had it installed, I don't remember actually using it since 0.20. Yes, it let me do things in new and different ways, but like Harvester said, it didn't happen in a FUN way. When the new shiny wore off, I stopped using it. Anyone that knows how I play games would be shocked to hear it, because I'm usually all about the infrastructure, the economy, etc. I might use multiplayer, I would use resources, but frankly, I'm not going to not enjoy the game if I don't have resources.

Actually, the lab serves two purposes. One, it reduces the amount of science lost due to transmission. If you turn in the experiment after analyzing it, you get the same amount you would without the analysis. The second purpose is that it allows you to reuse the goo containers and material science labs. Without the lab, if you transmit the results of either of those, or take the results from the part, the part can't be reused. The lab can, with some time, reset the part so that you can use it again.

Pretty sure that that was the closing ceremony, and I'm not certain that they said 0.24 or just soon on the contracts.

Yup, not the first decision they've made that I've disagreed with. The game's still fun, but I'll miss this.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I've capped out the tech tree in about 5 saves already. Sometimes I take a different path, sometimes I try with a different set of "game changer" mods like Mission Controller, FAR, DR, RT2, TAC life support, etc.

The problem with that logic is that since everything in game is already doable, it would apply to just about any suggestion/idea. It also misses the fact that this is something the devs said they want to do. They want to make the atomic engine more realistic. If it weren't for spaceplanes or this planned nerva change, I wouldn't find the idea of taking tweakable fuel tanks to this level very useful.

Odd, what I was seeing was that the "analyze" button was turning up in the panel that pops up that lets you discard/keep/transmit the results, a fourth option. Maybe I wasn't following it right, maybe the person you watched was confused as well (there did seem to be some confusion about it when I watched it as well).

Except that not everything is possible. The devs have stated that they planned on switching the atomic engine over to using liquid fuel only, but didn't want to have to duplicate all existing fuel tanks in LFO-only variants. Their solution was to wait until tweakables would allow them to use the same fuel tanks either way. Now, explain how this can be done in game still meeting their original specifications of not duplicating all the fuel tank parts without having tweakables be able to go beyond what we've seen so far.

For the record, I'm not angry (sorry if I came across as such). I'm just saying that this version of tweakables doesn't solve certain problems that the devs have claimed that tweakables would solve, so I suspect that this isn't the final version of tweakables. As for the people insisting that changing the tank proportions would be unrealistic or whatever, you're missing the point that we're talking about issues that the devs have said that tweakables would solve, and this version of tweakables isn't solving them. If they've decided to resolve those issues some other way, that's fine, but since they haven't said anything about it, the options are: 1) this isn't the final version of tweakables. 2) they've decided to solve those issues some other way. 3) the issues in question have fallen between the cracks.

That's certainly one use for the EVA experiment results transfer, another would be to make it so that you keep most of your science if you do an apollo-style mission, discarding the craft that actually did the landing. I don't think you can transfer the "landed" credit for recovery science, but now you can at least transfer all the other science.

I watched someone do it and did not get that impression, as long as the lab module was on the same craft (or a craft docked to that craft). The features being discussed are: A new part, big (the size of a Rockomax -32 if I remember correctly) and heavy (3.5 tons), and requiring two kerbals to make it function (that may be what dogface saw, if you don't put kerbals in the lab module before the launch, you will have to EVA kerbals into the lab). It has two functions. The first is that it can analyze experiment results and instrument reports to decrease the amount of science lost if you transmit the results/reports. The second is that with the goo canisters and materials science bay, if you don't discard the results, you can't run the experiment again. The lab module lets you reset those two science parts so that you can repeat the experiment after transmitting or moving them to alternate storage, in the same biome/location or a different one. Kerbals in EVA can take the results from a capsule or science part and store them in a (different) capsule, with some limits. Basically, there is some restriction on storing experiment results of the same type in the same capsule. I don't know if it's experiment-per-biome similar to EVA reports, or experiment type regardless of biome similar to crew reports.

Fuel ratios aren't going to change in this situation though. If NASA ever got around to launching a thermal atomic rocket, I can promise you that they wouldn't be using tanks repurposed from something else, with mass taken up by empty oxidizer tanks. The devs mentioned that they didn't want to have to have separate fuel-only rocket tanks which is the reason our current atomic engine uses oxidizer. They said that tweakables was their solution, and the version of tweakables that we've got now isn't a solution to this problem, and in fact, I haven't seen anything that implies that they've changed the atomic engine to not use oxidizer.

From what I understand, a lot of the OP-ness people are seeing in the RAPIER engine is actually one or more changes in the basic game that will affect stock jet/turbojet engines as well. It does sound like there might be less benefit from spamming air intakes, though that wasn't specifically the purpose. Chief among the possible changes that would make a jet seem stronger is the fact that resources are properly pooled, so if a jet engine needs X intake air, it can take some of that air from one intake, more from another intake, etc. Previously, for each engine tick, the engine needed to get all of its intake air from a single intake. As for the science changes: I'm not sure how they interact, and I'm sure they do, but transmitted and returned science appear to have different diminishing returns. Do one of either, and you'll have most of the science you can get from that experiment in that location using that method. So repeat transmissions are mostly dead. Not a big deal to me, I had already stopped using them. Furthermore, unless you have a lab module you can use to reset the experiment, the goo and materials science parts can only be used once (used as in you transmit or take the results, I'm pretty sure you can reset it if you discard the results). While I considered this change possible, I wasn't expecting this, and it's going to have a serious impact on some of my missions. I'll deal with it. The science lab, in addition to letting you reset those two experiments, basically reduce transmission losses. If you'll be returning the results, it appears to provide no increase in the science. An EVA'ed kerbal can take the results from an experiment and store the results in a capsule. This allows for full science return from landers that are discarded before the rest of the craft returns. Small catch, it seems that multiple experiments of the same type don't store together, though I'm not sure if this is one-experiment-type only, or one experiment-type-per-biome. If it's one-experiment-type-per-biome, that will increase the difference in science returns between manned and unmanned missions. I didn't see any of the changes, but one of the streamers also said that the devs had rebalanced the research amounts of the various experiments, possibly to make up for the reduced returns that the other changes will cause, possibly just to change the speed that players could go through the research tree. Finally, Minmus got biomes, eight of them.

The devs have specifically stated that they wanted to avoid having to have separate parts for all the different variations on fuel combinations, and that tweakables were how they were going to avoid this. So far, tweakables aren't doing a good job of replacing the need for multiple variants of the same parts, which is why I suspect that they're not done with tweakables. If you're talking the philosophy of it, then yes, the space shuttle was excessive for what it was used for most of the time.

True, that was waiting on tweakables so that they didn't have to have multiple types of every fuel tank. This is one of the reasons I think they're not done with tweakables. Changing the atomic rocket engine to only use liquid fuel and not letting us use fuel tanks that pack in more liquid fuel with the same dry mass would kill the usefulness of them.

There have been various numbers given ranging from 15-30%, and a few examples of even higher performance improvements. There were also improvements in the memory usage mentioned, but noone's given any numbers on that.

How often do real space programs carry dead weight just to reuse common parts? Tweakables have been billed as a solution to many problems, including being able to change what gets stored in containers. Not just the quantities, but the actual types. I'm perfectly willing to consider that this didn't make it into the first pass, but if this is all tweakables can do, it's going to cause SQUAD to have to find alternate solutions to several problems.