Pulstar

The calendar/clock should be an UI widget accessible in flight if you ask me. Being accessible from the tracking station/mission control as well wouldn't hurt if you need an overview from the KSC screen before you choose where to go next or what contract to take. But knowing the phase angles/launch window time while you are controlling a vessel is simply necessary. Having to jump to the space center and back to check them would be tedious. Also we already have a mission control building at the KSC, it's just that it does nothing and you can't click on it to open a window yet. But it will be accessible in 0.24 since it will be sued to manage contracts.

To be honest a proper transfer window calendar/clock (or a built in protractor telling you the current and desired phase angle, as it is more educational IMO) and a tutorial scenario on interplanetary travel would be a better idea. Without an ingame tool a tutorial is a bit pointless, unless you want the game to tell new players "download a plugin or grab a protractor from your desk before clicking next" in a tutorial message. It's pretty much impossible to figure out the stuff on your own, unlike getting to orbit or landing on the Mun. I think that interplanetary transfer is too obscured for new players and bar the few souls who put a physical protractor to their screens, everybody uses some kind of plugin for interplanetary travel anyway. We should have that functionality in stock, just saying when you should go but not how to get there exactly. A player should know when he should start tinkering with maneuver nodes to get to a desired planet, but how to plot his course should be left to him to figure out.

If scientific sensors become as expensive as they should with the advent of budgets I can see how having a cheap generic data storage part would be a good idea. Currently it would just seem redundant to adding more sensors to the rover since they're not really heavy or large.

The Whackjob Space Challenge Foundation contract pack? Or maybe perhaps the Manley M-Prize Organization contract pack? I wonder if the individual companies and organizations have their own reputation level with the player's space program (would be cool) that determines who and what kind of missions they give you.

Yeah, I agree with you Creature on the housekeeping issue. If supplies for life support are ever a factor, I honestly think that you should have supply modules that carry enough supplies last up to a (earth) year, maybe two for a crew of 3. Basic pods should carry enough for flying and orbiting around Kerbin (kind of like they do already with monopropellant and electric charge), so a week or two worth of supplies so that a player doesn't need to worry about them until he goes beyond the Mun or Minmus (or forgets to land in time). You'd need supply modules to store food for either longterm orbital experiments or trips to Duna, Jool etc. these would of course increase dry mass, but also reflect the difficulty in sending manned missions into deep space. The end of the tech-tree should allow you to create self-sustaining outposts with greenhouses/hydroponics gardens and 100% efficient (I know this is fantasy but so are non-decaying eternal RTGs) water recycling, precisely to avoid the issue of micromanaging logistics which would turn the game into a tedious grind of resupply missions. As for relays I believe that LOS should be optional, but effective antenna range and data loss should be calculated based on actual distance between the celestial bodies.

The thing about eye candy is that it doesn't necessarily mean a slower development of new features. Unless the artist is also a coder intimately familiar with KSP's code it is unlikely he will be working on new frameworks that the coders work. But he's still on the team and has to do, well, something (you pay him for something after all), so he might as well work on whatever art assets need to be made if he can't contribute a lot to the main coding effort. 4 and 5 though would slow it down though, probably. But biomes for some places are unlikely at this point, some of the moons or planets may indeed be in for an art pass in the future after all. If you're going to remake the shape of the surface it wouldn't make sense to draw a biome map only to have to redraw it in the future.

Yeah, but the remade plane parts will most certainly be not finished with the main 0.24 branch. Probably for 0.25. I personally am quite excited to see what kind of contracts the community mods into the game. It's pretty cool that after not thinking about making the tech tree moddable and seeing that you can't stop the modding community they decided to let the modders mess with contracts by design.

I think HarvesteR or somebody else from the team even mentioned that in a pinch you'll be able to trade science, funds and reputation for one another, basically as a last emergency measure to avoid losing if things go very wrong in career mode. Though losing will still be possible, just not as easy as "run out of money, no contracts you can do, GG no RE".

Well it will probably get solar prominences and flares as well as other visuals for the sun in the future. The Wiki mentions that, but as with everything on the wiki related to long term plans take it with a grain of salt.

If food supplies and kerbal hunger (for snacks!) were ever implemented then having orbital or surface greenhouse bases could be useful for resupplying ships. Another idea would be to have relay satellites/stations for communications to increase science yield from data transmissions. Better send one dedicated comms relay to orbit Jool than have a large antenna and panels on every manned craft or probe you send there. One idea I had way back before the science lab module was added was to have stations run long term experiments that may need resupplying. You put the station in orbit, hit start and just go do other stuff while the experiment slowly completes itself over the course of months. This could be for instance long term effects on kerbal health. Or surface or orbital based astronomical observatories or experiments. Perhaps if skills for kerbals ever get introduced (harvester mentioned them once a long time ago, but it isn't clear when or if they ever get implemented) you could send kerbals to a base to train/improve skills.

It was mentioned in a squadcast two or three weeks back, Maxmaps specifically said that the plane parts are going to get redone and that the Intern is going to work on them. Sadly the said squadcast is gone from the past broadcasts on KSP TV. But I remember rewinding and playing that bit a few times over to be sure I heard it correctly. Also it's not like it is hard to guess which parts need a revamp the most. There's a clear gap in quality between the plane parts and everything else ever since old parts started getting revamps around 0.18.

Point 3 is on the agenda for the near future from what Maxmaps told us in a squadcast two or three weeks ago. Hugo is probably working on that already, as per what was written in the recent devnotes. As far as the rate of development is concerned, I think that the current approach is good. Release when a feature is fully functional even if it lacks content. There are pretty big frameworks that have to be implemented so it is better the devs can do them start to finish.

Crew skills or perks, gained by total flight time, training (only up to a basic level) or contracts fulfilled, so that your Kerbal Space Exploration veterans, while still rocket fodder in the name of Science, seem more valuable alive. If only because hiring a skilled expert replacement costs a lot of funds. Basically get experience and spend it to increase skills or unlock perks. Kerbals themselves could be divided into classes or have a total limit of skills they can posses, so that none of them ever become jack of all trades, master of all and players have to think who to put into their pods. Teamwork is vital for all crews in space, KSP should reflect it. The astronaut training center really needs a use and I think this is a very good area to explore next. Skills could work as a linear progression to the full skill bonus, like up to a total of 20%. As a rule of thumb they should not affect delta-v (apart from possibly doing so indirectly by for instance reducing power usage and thus the total mass of power generation parts on a rover or something since you put less of them on it). Some skill ideas: Engineering - reduces vessel electrical power usage and increases overheating tolerance. Piloting - increases turn rate or response from reaction wheels and ailerons. Driving - better braking force from rover wheels, rover wheels more resistant to impact/force, better rover top speed. Exploration - better EVA pack usage, more EVA pack thrust and ISP, increased science yield from crew reports. Geology - surface sample and seismic sensor science yield increase. Physics - pressure data, temperature data, atmospheric analysis and gravity sensor data science yield increase. Communications - better signal strength and less data loss during transmissions. Perks could be anything but they would require experience and/or certain level of skill to unlock. For example they could unlock new experiments for scientists, the ability to repair certain broken parts for engineers (shattered solar panels for instance). It could be the ability to see a predicted landing site based on the surface's rotation and atmosphere slowing you down (kind of like mechjeb does). Stuff that doesn't really scale well with use and is better represented as a binary can/can't do skill. The other thing I would like to see is some basic life support. Basically having to worry that kerbals don't run out of power or else CO2 scrubbers go offline and everybody asphyxiates. Also food and water supplies. Pods by themselves would carry enough for LKO or Minmus/Mun missions by default, but if you want to go to Duna you'd need to add mass in the form of a hitchiker's module or supply part filled with extra snacks for the trip. End of the tech tree parts could include hydroponics gardens and other parts enabling long term trips into deep space or continued habitation of space stations without resupply missions. Though I fear life support kind of stuff would have lower priority and it would probably be tied to difficulty levels.

Overall we'll be getting contracts (randomly generated missions basically) for career mode next, launching rockets in career mode will cost money which you will get from doing contracts. Your space program will have reputation (based probably on how many kerbals/rockets you lost and the contracts you finished). Also we're getting two new engine parts probably. And some interface polish. That's all coming in 0.24 as soon as that's done, which isn't that far off apparently. In the future after 0.24 is done (so probably in 0.25) we're getting new models for the old spaceplane parts and some new spaceplane parts as well. That of course is not the only thing that will be in future updates, but the rest is all a secret for now and not set in stone until the team starts working on it. It's basically the only thing confirmed beyond 0.24.

I'd rather have not so much an AI as simply NPC spacecraft here and there as "fluff". Random "rival" flags popping up on celestial bodies over time, a contract to create and dock a lab module to a joint space station, leftover landers or surfaces bases on other worlds, orbiters and satellites, the occasional stranded kerbonauts. The designs for those could be taken from the community, kind of like with the logo contest. With the contract system there's quite a few things you can do with NPC spacecraft. You can have a for instance a Duna mission mimicking Mars direct where the organization giving the contract has a working kerbin return vehicle already on Duna's surface, they just volunteers and somebody (you) to send some kerbals to Duna to the vehicle. Or you could have somebody (the friendly neighborhood kethane karthel?) give you a mission to test their refueling platform by docking with it. Or missions to recover stranded probes with no antenna or just the data the probes collected. Quite a few things you could do with just spawning NPC crafts in random (or not so random) orbits or places on the surface.

That's the data saved by the progress tracker which was introduced in 0.20 or what was the last update before the science one, it has been at the end of the persistence and save files ever since. It notes how far have you been to every body. If you landed somewhere, only did a flyby through the SoI or orbited and at what altitude. It's been lying in the code ever since both to track how far players have gotten in the game as feedback to the devs and to be used in the future (read: now) to develop the contract generation system (so the system doesn't give you fly to jool missions when you didn't reach low Kerbin orbit yet).

Oh this is great, you could for example get an Ion Engine testing mission before you research it with one xenon tank and a single engine added to the part stockpile. Also the VAB already displays "in stock" values (or used to), so I guess that a stockpile will be used anyway. I just hope that parts get auto-bought on launch.

If you tried real hard you could do a two-stage fully recoverable space taxi with a space worthy but still suborbital lifter. Basic premise is this, the lifter stage gets you close but not quite to orbit, but still into space on a suborbital trajectory. The upper stage burns to insert itself into a preliminary stable orbit before you lose the lifter stage due to atmospheric reentry. Switch back to the lifter stage, land it. You'd need a probe core, large parachutes and probably landing legs to pull this off. If Squad adds a feature that allows jettisoned stages to be land safely without them being controlled (a circumvention of the current "atmosphere clears non-controlled vessels in suborbital trajectories" mechanic) I believe you could achieve full re-usability regardless of the number of stages. The main problem with recovering spent stages is that you encounter the problem of having to be in two (or more) places at the same time to simulate them. With multiplayer this would be easy, but for singleplayer it's trickier. I'm not sure if the engine can simulate two different places with two different spacecraft at the same time on one machine, without needing a significant rewrite of some old eldritch code that handles ingame scenes. EDIT: as to what Doctor Axel said, I personally think we should get the option to either keep the vessel intact which still allows you to modify the recovered craft in the VAB/SPH (like say you lost a landing leg or goo canister on your way back so you add a new one, then put it on a new lifter stage or something) and one to disassemble it for parts to be re-purposed for something else. Modifying would yield no additional cost, bar the cost of recovery of the craft, but it would give you less options in changing the design unless you pay a disassembly cost penalty for swapping them around (VAB editor should have a "restore to recovered state" button in such a scenario). Disassembly would return the parts into your stock but at an additional cost of disassembly, or it would give you a 90% or something discount on buying another version of that part (depending on whether an actual stockpile and storage of parts is used or not). Unless Kerbal rockets are indeed lego filled with rocket fuel then I guess having dissasembly and assembly costs is pointless.

They don't know themselves. Until 0.24 is done there are only some vague and general ideas floating around in Harvester's head on what to do next, which are likely to change depending on what is needed. For example 0.23 was supposed to be the contract system patch just before 0.22 was released but ended up being a science rebalancing, tweaking etc. patch after 0.22 feedback in both experimentals testing and after release. However there is something we do know that is planned for the future and worked on now/soon besides multiplayer. Not sure if it will come as soon as in 0.25 but if I heard everything what maxmaps was saying correctly in the last KSP TV Squadcast, there's a new intern at Squad who is/will be doing new spaceplane parts and probably remaking the old ones. So that's one thing we'll probably see this year, hopefully. But it's hard to guess how long that will take or in what update will that end up being. Until they finish 0.24 and they hold a design meeting to specify the 0.25 development plan nothing is set in stone for what 0.25 will focus on though. We could speculate, but there are no guarantees. One thing I think is likely to happen in 0.25 is a contract system rebalancing plus some general changes and fleshing out of the contract/budget mechanics, possibly difficulty levels/settings if those don't make it into 0.24. I doubt the system won't need tweaking after the community focuses on breaking the hell out of it.

Outside of adding biomes on more celestial bodies and some new experiment modules (probe camera? drill? telescope?) and spicing up planet terrain I think the current part roster should be looked at and some holes plugged. Spaceplane parts really need a rework and a few new pieces. Like smaller size wings and ailerons, a few different wing shapes and either a variant of procedural wings or reworking the wing parts to have better fitting blocks. Also the size 2 and size 3 spaceplane parts just need to be remade altogether into something both more shiny and easier to use with existing parts. Out of all the things in the game the size 2 and 3 spaceplane parts are the only placeholder art assets left, the rest is either final or a WIP. Oh and adding the one thing tweakables were supposed to let us do, have a tank's full capacity filled with just oxidizer or fuel as well as some autofill options (all fuel, all oxi and balanced mix in the right proportions to burn all of it). We could use some medium sized rover bits, stuff like an enclosed crew compartment or a rover cockpit like so: New space station or surface base modules. Why not have a hydroponics lab small biodome for instance? Could also work as a bigger goo canister/science jr. and enhance the aesthetics of surface or orbital bases.

Well, if anyone has the political will to do it they do. I remain skeptical whether they go through with the plan to build it or not, 7 or 8 years ago building a moon base was also supposedly on the agenda for NASA. It's very ambitious, but more feasible than landing men on Mars or any other currently available "first" in space. Plus they already proven they can land a spacecraft on the Moon. If the Chinese are really running out of prestige-driven megaproject options it's a solid pick and they have the money to spend.

Actually you could drag maneuver nodes along trajectories since they have been added in 0.18. Also personally I just use Kerbal Alarm Clock to know when the launch window appears, then I fiddle around with manuever nodes to get a proper planned manuever for an encounter. Usually the burn is inaccurate or I don't have the right inclination so I do a correction burn at an ascending or descending node. A final correction burn is done before I enter the target's SoI to adjust any aerobraking/aerocapture I might be attempting to do and to get me into an equatorial orbit matching the planet's rotation around its own axis.

Well, I know of two ways to make a SSTO Duna lander. One is to use two or three LV-N's, they have enough thrust for Duna and their efficiency makes up for all the mass they add. To lift a three man capsule two are enough IIRC. The other is to use those probe-sized 48-7s liquid fuel engine, four of them are more than enough to lift all the fuel you may need and a larger manned module like a 3-man pod, 2-man lander can or the hitchhiker. You need about 6 tons of fuel plus oxidizer, that's six fl-t200 tanks (or four fl-t200 and four fl-t100 tanks), should have plenty of fuel left after achieving LDO. Depending on how where the kethane base he wants to ferry kerbals to and from is, this may be very difficult if not impossible. The higher the ground level the harder it becomes to land the plane safely due to lower atmospheric pressure, because you need to maintain higher velocity to glide down. You can counter this with enough wing surface area but that makes the second problem a lot worse, that being finding flat terrain suitable for landing. With large wings you are just begging for something to hit the ground and explode. Probably the best idea would be to add some wings and control surfaces to make the targeted landing easier, but use parachute and drop slowly during the final phase.

Whether or not we'll get cash for doing contracts in 0.24 is unconfirmed so far. Contracts and mission generation for those contracts are the only confirmed things so far. Although to me it seems likely that we would also get a basic economy with missions and contracts, I am under the impression that it wouldn't be a whole lot of work if the mission mechanics are implemented and working correctly. Seems like basic math mostly, give X cash for finished contract, subtract Y cash from cash pool for launching ship where Y is the total part cost of a design. The issue would be fleshing it out and balancing it, that would take more than one update, same as it was and is with the science system.

First of all no it is not safe, vessels that are not in focus may get flung out of Jool's SoI by a pesky moon while you're doing other stuff. I wouldn't worry about Vall doing it though, Laythe in particular but also Tylo are quite fond of doing it as their SoI's are very big so it is easy to get an encounter. Vall's SoI is rather small, so the risk of an encounter is small, and if you get one Vall's weak gravity won't change your craft's orbit much. Personally I park all my stuff around Laythe, usually I do a direct aerocapture at Laythe itself rather than diving into Jool's atmo. Saves a lot of delta-v, doesn't take a lot to escape Laythe's SoI, makes orbital rendezvous fairly easy. The other option would be to do an aerocapture around Jool, but you'll end up with a periapsis very close to Jool and unless your apoapsis is also low odds are the vessel will also be on Laythe's SoI's spacecraft sweeping path. Best place to park it from a Jool aerocapture would be between Vall's and Laythe's orbits, takes a bit of delta-v to do it though as you'll need to raise periapsis to a decent altitude beyond Laythe's reach. Really depends where and what you want to do around Jool though.