Pulstar

I always went with what KAC suggested and never had any problems with going to Jool or elsewhere with it.

Hero of Kerbalnautics would be a better moniker. Maybe in addition to rank there could be a small "fame" stat for kerbals? Basically the function of how much prestige/reputation he helped you get. They could give you a slight or moderate rep bonus for all missions they do, but if you lose them the reputation hit should be quite huge due to public outrage over the loss of a living legend.

I definitely agree with this and you are not alone in thinking that Kerbal stats should be fleshed out and matter. If it was up to me I would either make "personality" or "character" traits like stupidity and courage serve as a hard (or semi-hard, with limited room for improvement via experience) limitation to how far a Kerbal could advance in certain proper skills, like say piloting, geology, astrophysics or exploration. The idea is that a Kerbals couldn't be jack of all trades, but they would have a primary role they're best at, with mediocre backup skills to do if you unfortunately lost the primary say science guy due to running out of EVA fuel while 200 meters above Duna's surface.

Well with budgets added probes should be simply cheaper to send. Likewise the hypothetical addition of life support should make manned flight more difficult. The point about not having to send more than one kerbal anywhere is very good. The only instance I can think off is if you need more Kerbals to control spacecraft but can't use probes for some reason (parts not researched for instance). To truly solve this though we would need actual skills, experience and specializations for Kerbals. Have one be better at specific kinds of science, another at piloting etc. things like that. This would also solve the other problem, the lack of gameplay reasons to pick one kerbal over another for a mission. As well as making you care about your expert rock lover space geologist Bill Kerman so much you actually don't strand him in space. Reputation/prestige gains should definitely be bigger for doing something with a bigger crew. Also some contracts should require a "minimum of X" crew to be done. Likewise we really need hazards to make manned missions to certain places more risky (as in possible to loose kerbals to something). Procedural craters on the Mun already work as an example of these. But extreme weather (Laythe Cyclones? Eve lightning storms?), volcanism, lava flow, heat or radiation (we could really use a geiger counter or similar part) should put limits on where you can send kerbals, without researching appropriate upgrades to EVA suits or spacecraft equipment or simply being very careful. The key though should be to still give players tools to overcome such hazards, just make them either in proper places in the tech tree or costly enough.

I see your point with clipping and I do agree with drag. But even so adding a large enough drag coefficient to the part would be sufficient with the current mechanics. And buoyancy for anything other than balloons isn't really needed, not sure why it would have to be part of the aerodynamic reworks.

It would be good for lowering the CoM on rovers.

New aerodynamics code won't change anything in this case since balloons use buoyancy based on atmospheric density to fly, so they'll use a completely different piece code altogether. The only thing aerodynamics would influence with balloons would be drag if used to construct an airship. For pure ascent straight up drag changes nothing with balloons, it is is a non-issue for balloons since you are not using fuel to get up (where as for rockets and spaceplanes drag does change how much delta-v you need to get into orbit), hence unless Kerbin's atmospheric density/pressure profile was changed, no change in the aerodynamics would affect how good balloons would be in KSP. Also they're fairly easy to balance since there's a clear altitude ceiling when the weight of the balloon is equal to the lift gained from buoyancy, adding more parts to it just reduces that maximum altitude. I imagine you could do some silly things with tiny ion engine probes with a small rocket orbital insertion stage attached to a balloon. But rockoons are also a thing even if not used much in real life. There's not much room for stupid abuses here if you ask me.

They'll get confused and maybe angry for a day or week at most, after that everybody will get used to it. Save wiping is more likely to cause outrage than having to redesign lifters, and anybody that actually likes building lots of planes probably uses FAR already and wants the aerodynamics changes to happen anyway. Doesn't seem like a very large group to me, especially considering that parft of the appeal of the game is realism. I wouldn't worry too much about this. You spend most of the game outside of the atmosphere, people don't get attached to lifters much since they're one use only and everything you leave in space will remain unchanged.

We *may* see a nascent hardcore mode with 0.24 or in the update after it. It was mentioned sometime this year that if there is enough time, such a thing could be implemented in 0.24. to make things harder for the more experienced players. Although how exactly it will look is unknown, probably just less money from rewards and save/load restrictions for now before more features get added. Life support and re-entry heat were two things that were mentioned as options that could possibly implemented but only as part of such a mode. But that was mentioned a very long time ago (at least a year), so nobody knows if that's still planned for some point in the future. I like the IVA idea, it makes sense if you'd could attach cameras or they'd be attached to some parts by default (some on the pods, docking ports). I think Romfarer once mentioned, shortly after he joined the team last year, that he'd like to make his docking cam mod stock. We might get that as part of the polishing phase after scope completionin the future.

It wasn't just hinted but outright stated that we're getting a mission control window by clicking on the Mission Control building at the KSC (the small one you can't click on yet). Though it is a good question what you will do there, besides looking over contracts. Perhaps it will also feature a callendar/alarm clock similar to the KAC mod eventually? It would make more sense to have things like that and launch windows tracked from there rather than the tracking station.

I'd rather have courage/stupidity (as well as other and purely hypothetical personality traits) affect what skills can a Kerbal train to what level, should those get implemented and also their hiring price (poor candidates come cheap, the Jebs are expensive). A stupid Kerbal shouldn't be able to become a good scientist or engineer, while a cowardly Kerbal would make a poor pilot or EVA explorer. There's really a lot you can do with the Kerbals themselves if some kind of experience system got introduced. I mentioned this in another topic. You could have experience unlock new experiments for scientist crewmember Kerbals, allow them to perform more EVA tasks for Pilots/Engineers.

That is mostly a mystery, although a few major things that have been mentioned in the past year or so come to mind. - kerbal skills/experience - life support (possibly as a "higher difficulty" toggle) - heatshields and re-entry heat (possibly as a "higher difficulty" toggle) - payload fairings and improved aerodynamics Out of those I would only speculate that kerbal skills and life support could end up getting implemented before scope completion, fairings and heatshields would need the aerodynamics reworks to happen first (which IMO is unlikely to happen before career mode core features are done, but who knows). Some minor features that also have been mentioned around: proper science data loss/antenna range mechanics based on distance, discovering celestial bodies such as Moons (telescopes on probes?), repairing vessels in flight (jury rigging?). Apart from that the issue is mostly polish and content which is supposed to be the goal beyond scope completion. Adding new biomes and new surface features to planets/moons (procedural craters, geysers, volcanoes, cities on Kerbin), planetary weather effects, eye-candy here and there, new celestial bodies, more contract types, new experiment types, various minor but often requested parts (airbags for lithobraking, electric propellers, nuclear reactors, balloons and other parts mods did, you get the idea), re-balancing everything, optimization, implementing an "endgame" goal of career mode and of course reworking the aerodynamics model.

Ultimately you have to ask yourself how does decreased rewards make the game harder rather than more grindy? Less money from contracts is not an issue, financial budget limitations have a direct effect on what you can do to solve a task so that is indeed a challenge related to craft and mission profile design. You can either grind or become more efficient in designing spacecrafts/missions (you can't eliminate grinding, but you can allow players to mitigate it by smart thinking). Not sure how to apply this to science. I rather have something limit your ability to do science/experiments than merely scaling down rewards. Money will already affect that, science parts won't be (or shouldn't be) cheap. Having both science and money scale with difficulty level would be redundant because they're already both related/connected.

Though the less silly of those events could be incorporated into contracts. Giant radioactive ants attacks may not fit KSP but an organization wanting you to see if you can create giant ants by exposing ants to the radiation of Jool would.

Yeah, I remember that they said that about stock reentry heat as well. And there has also been talk of a "hardcore mode" on more than one occasion by squad. A better question is what is difficulty? How do you turn something into a challenge rather than into a grind? What would a "hardcore" or "manley mode" mode feature over normal difficulty? Quicksave/load disabled for such a mode makes sense. Kerbal permadeath. A different tech tree (probes first?). Excessive g-forces killing kerbals. Bigger reputation hits for losing Kerbals. Lower monetary rewards for contracts. Making some mechanics tied to a higher difficulty level isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the question is what they should be? Life support is one I can think off although it depends on the specific mechanics. If it's not too complicated I see no reason for it not be included in stock as a "basic" or "normal" difficulty level system.

Well Kerbals getting meaningful stats/skills is likely unless Harvester forgot that he mentioned once that he'd like to add them Considering that Kerbal skills are pretty much nonexistent I wouldn't be surprised if that's next on the agenda, the astronaut training complex lacks the "training" part (unless all it does is tell kerbals how to put on spacesuits). With budgets, contracts and science frameworks implemented the only other major system I can think of that is missing, for the career mode side of the game, would be life support, but it's not certain whether the developers are keen on adding that. But as usual we'll have to wait and see. It would be nice if assembling a Kerbal crew took more thought than "these guys because their names seem cool" due to meaningful gameplay effects.

Streaming has actually gotten so popular that even the console manufacturers felt obliged to integrate twitch support into their newest consoles. It is simply the "in" thing now and KSP falls into the type of games that can be quite enjoyable to watch (multiplayer, sandbox and games with large degrees of randomness fall into this category in general IMO).

Personally I would hide the stupidity/courage meters if they don't impact gameplay, but leave them for the crew animations since they use that. Unless you plan adding actual gameplay mechanics that need a quantified value of "courage" or "stupidity" it makes little sense to show them. Overall courage/stupidity makes more sense as static personality/character traits of a binary nature, kind of like say "creative", "curious", "thrill-seeker", "clumsy", "athletic" that would give some kind of passive bonuses and/or penalties to proper skills that can be improved and do need a specific value (rather than a binary TRUE or FALSE). Leave the meters/bars for skills that can be improved basically. Unless you really need to know how stupid a kerbal is because the fate of a mission may depend on it there's no point in showing more than a generic "smart" for stupidity<35 or "stupid" for stupidity>70 as part of a list if character traits.

I'm not sure how to translate bravery into gameplay unless you add some kind of morale mechanic. Then KSP could go all x-com and have Kerbals refuse tasks or worse if they start panicking due to parts exploding, the ship running out of power or pulling too many gees. Stupidity though should be a hindrance. Perhaps kerbals with high stupidity would be unable to perform certain EVA tasks like repacking parachutes, carrying science data or doing crew reports. This would be more in line with avoiding random failures that the dev team has been adamant about. Overall Kerbal stats needs to be expanded upon, their nice for the crew expressions but we do need reasons to pick one Kerbal over another for a mission. Other than having cooler names.

Not sure if firing Kerbonauts will ever be useful, unless we have to pay them salaries every month or year, or there's an upper limit of how many you can have hired based on your reputation. I'm actually wondering how hiring them will work once the astronaut complex's functionality will get expanded upon. Perhaps it will cost funds to "reroll" the applicant list. I mean, you do have to screen them with tests and examinations first out of how many eager green men there are on Kerbin to ride your rockets, that certainly has to cost money.

Can you name an instance happening after April of last year, where the PR'd features weren't in the update (backing it up with a link)? I only recall this happening to Mu's optimization branch for 0.22. Ever since the "expansion" fiasco last yearr PR guidelines seem to be pretty strict and they don't tell us anything unless it is currently being worked and it's probable it will make it into the update, keeping the uncertain things secret until the release notes. I'd argue that overall we're usually getting more than what Harvester says in the "goals for the next update" posts. Also I'm not really sure why do you expect the development plans for the next update given to the community for updates to be precise. Creative work, and software development does fall under it after all, isn't a standardized predictable enterprise. You don't know how the code should look or will look until you finish it or you realize that the whole approach to the problem was wrong (or impossible to implement) and come up with a better one. You'd need to have prophetic powers to actually deliver more than vague goals, that's a problem every plan for every project faces. Plans get revised all the time, since nobody can predict the challenges. What Squad tells us reflects that and they didn't think of such an approach because they had such a whim. The do it because that's what experience with developing the game has shown them. Some stuff got canceled, development focus got changed, new possibilities and opportunities have arisen and old plans were no longer valid. C'est la vie.

Folders or tagging craft designs so that you can filter by tag would be pretty useful , ditto for subassemblies.

You're forgetting that ARM featured a few new parts (including the claw which needed new mechanics to be coded and tested), random generation of asteroids and related mechanics along with maneuver node improvements in addition to the mentioned joint enhancement (which is a major improvement) and bug fixes. For slightly over 3 months since 0.23 that's not bad. Also there was a similar slowdown in development last year at the beginning of the year with 0.19. (also about 3 months). The 0.23.5 instead of a 0.24 may be confusing, implying that it was less work than a full number version, but that's simply because 0.24 was planned to be the contract update and the ARM patch was done before the contract branch. As to your question. I think that achieving scope completion is possible by the end of the year and that's what we should see this year. Whatever more career mode mechanics are planned shouldn't be as much work as the contract system framework and budgets, though I am curious as to what they will be. There aren't many gameplay frameworks that need to be implemented (multiplayer mostly and a few minor things), just a lot of content and polish (planets needing polish, new planet(s), biomes, new contracts, new parts, improved aerodynamics, science rebalancing, VAB/SPH editor improvements, new UI features). Overall I am pretty certain we will see version 1.0 within the next 24 months.

I mentioned this in a similar topic, but I could see a few uses for stations if certain mechanics got implemented. - Kerbal zero-g training module to improve kerbal skills (if kerbonauts get skills you can improve) - Space's effects on Kerbal health study module (science at the cost of having a kerbal sit in the module for an extended period of time in orbit) - Relays for data transmissions (so that you can save on money by not putting big expensive antennas on every rover/lander/orbiter) - Resupply bases for food (if food supplies ever became a requirement and you'd have greenhouses/hydroponics garden modules as an end game part) The station lab module isn't bad, but it could use a slight buff and without biomes outside of Kerbin's SoI it has very limited use.

The game is perfectly playable without ever telling you how much delta-v you have left, you either have more than enough fuel or not enough fuel. I mean sure, there's more room for failure because you don't know it. But if you guess the amount of fuel for a mission you are indeed quite likely to succeed, if only because you'll take more fuel with you just in case to be on the safe side. Guessing transfer windows on the other hand is a bit like winning the lottery, you need an exact value and not an "exact value or higher than it" so learning them by dumb luck trial and error is a lot more difficult and tedious. I'm on the fence when it comes to showing spacecraft delta-v. On one hand it does make the game easier, although without memorizing the delta-v map you still need to learn how much delta-v it takes to get/land anywhere yourself. On the other if you want to know it without mods, all you need to do is divide the fuel you have by the consumption rate per second, and set up a maneuver node with burn time as long as the time it would take to burn all the fuel you have left. So all in all hiding it away from the player is a bit pointless now that I think about it. We could also use total thrust and mass per stage values in the VAB and the vehicle information tab. TWR calculation can be done by the player since it is not hard. You know what, an in game calculator would also be nice. The game already gives the player a lot of useful values, why not encourage him to count (simple) stuff himself.