Pulstar

IIRC in one of the dev streams from earlier this year HarvesteR said he doesn't think such scanning is a fun mechanic. But my memory could be off on the details. To be honest current Kethane scanning wouldn't be that time consuming and dull if there was a wide scanner scanning three or more hexes wide at a time as it passes over them. Overall I think that mining/converting and time-warping is not much of an issue. It is an issue for things like getting income or science or tech every X days since the player can just warp and get stuff with no effort while still on the launchpad. With mining and refining the effort is finding the deposit, landing there and using those resources for bigger things (like refueling or possibly construction). Mining and refining could be instantaneous, but having it work while warping like kethane mining/refining does now would have little negative effect on gameplay if any (other than still having to wait, but not much). Also push button>get resource would work oddly with power generation, you would need to stack batteries, recharge them, dump power into conversion/mining, recharge again. Click, click, click, click until you get the desired ammount. Doesn't really eliminate the warping issue as you still need it if the mining/refining uses power, not making it use power would be plain silly and inconsistent. Clicking once to turn on the drills or the refining module and warping is less mindless busywork and like I already said it isn't really a "press one button, get rich with no effort" button. Also I just remembered how lovely Nova's models for the resource parts looked. That water-pump drill and rock drill for instance. With the biome system implemented you could do some pretty cool stuff with random resource generation.

I explained why HarvesteR and squad probably decided to focus on that first, re-balancing the entirety of the economy (costs for over a hundred parts plus income values on all the things that would give you money) every time you add a new system that radically changes craft designs would take too much time. Better do those systems before the economy, then do the economy once and properly with only minor tweaks. Less time wasted on balancing everything, more time to work on new stuff that needs to be implemented. Yes, they should design them at the same time more or less in the aspects of how they will interact, but implementing everything at the same time would be both troublesome for balance as systems would keep changing and evolving all the time requiring co-dependent systems to be rebalanced. I think that also explains why they did science in 0.22 rather than budgets and missions, because balancing money income, costs and rewards when you don't know what crafts the player will be able to build at what stage, would be kind of like drawing a map of place you never been to or saw even just on pictures without really knowing what the terrain there looks like. Still those are just my words and not theirs and possibly they had other reasoning.

It is not going to be in 0.23, HarvesteR actually said that during an interview on bigsushi.fm from 5 days ago. Originally he planned to focus on budgets, money and the economy, but the idea now is to polish up science, fixing the obvious issues with it and fleshing out the related mechanics more so that the system is as complete as it possibly can be at this stage of development. So budgets will be in 0.24 probably. Why? Well he said that science polishing is not the only thing that will be in 0.23, he did say that a feature that kept getting pushed back too much will be the other focus of 0.23 development (not resources). Maxmaps or C7 also mentioned in the last squadcast that the next update will take a bit longer to develop than 0.22 IIRC. This is probably something that needs to be done now so that it doesn't mess up balancing the economy when costs and income get added. My guess is it will be re-entry heat and possibly an aerodynamics rework since those will change how we build crafts a lot, and such a change would require a part cost or income re-balancing if it was added after an economy. But that's just speculation on my part, there could be some other feature that got delayed a lot and is needed now that I may not know about. A dev blog entry will be posted sometime soon detailing what the focus of 0.23 will be so we'll find out soon enough, either via it or via the weekly. Either way it is important to consider that if a major new addition that changes how we build rockets happens, it will result in having to re-balance the economy. It would be best if loose end features that would require a complete economy overhaul get added first.

I remember finding that by accident when looking for some new jazz on youtube. I do not remember who the composer is but he is listed in the game credits.

Somebody made a Mun hovercraft, it was insane but it worked. Not sure if it survived April though. Also it is possible to build solar powered ion engine planes for Duna (which did *not* use the infiniglide bug). I remember I posted a few images of mine but I think they got eaten by the forum time traveling incident in April. I also managed to do a one kerbal solar plane but I'm not sure if the infiniglide bug made it fly or not, it only worked on Kerbin though and possibly Eve. 500 Newtons of thrust is not as little as you think, the issue is just getting enough solar panels and the tile ones are the best due to power/mass ratio and g-force tolerance but they need structural parts to put them onto. The advantage of Ion Engine rovers is that they can go much faster than regular rovers (40 m/s on Duna easily), however they can not climb hills. You could use RCS as an afterburner to help them with those but it was a limited resource. Also if you think driving rovers on the Mun now is hard try driving one which uses landing gear which has no suspension. I think that now that is pretty much a death wish considering the addition of procedural craters.

Like I said that is still being worked on, I don't remember if HarveR, C7 or maxmaps said it during one of the recent squadcast streams or in the recent interview on bigsushi.fm (that one has some nice hints at the end on what 0.23 is going to be about, but I digress), but basically it was confirmed that it's not ready yet for release unfortunately but still being worked on.

It is true that reactors need some use first as there aren't many power-hungry things in the game. The most obvious would be for resource mining and processing, which is probably why blutonium was featured on the chart and I don't think it was just to fill up the LV-N, solar panels would definitely be too little to power refineries. I also think that they could make ion engines useful for bigger vessels assuming their power output to mass ratio would be enough to power large ion thrusters or big clusters of them. Then there is the possibility that we could get a VASIMR equivalent as a lower ISP but higher thrust engine requiring more power.

If tweakables ever get added maybe it would be possible to have surface panels as a an option on fuel tanks? Treat them as one part with the tank, kill two birds with one stone so to speak. The downside could be that they're a bit heavier and more fragile as far as impact damage goes than regular fuel tanks. Also would be a good option for wings IMO.

Multicore support can only happen if unity developers do it, otherwise it would have been implemented a long time ago. The issue is mostly with the PhysX implementation that unity uses, it is simply very old and squad can't do much about it on their end. However a major code overhaul is coming soon, as the optimization was supposed to be featured in 0.22 but got delayed since it still needs to work out some issues. It is supposed to be a significant performance boost.

It was/is a test planet for the PQS system and some other new code that needs testing on a "live" subject like new planetary features, procedural craters etc. I wouldn't expect it to appear in the game as that's not its purpose, although its concept may get reused. Either way it is unrelated to Gas Planet 2 which will probably appear sooner or later in the game.

I'll add that the OP may have missed the purpose of biomes on Kerbin a bit. Well apart from the fact that it makes no sense not to have those there when other places will. It's a measure to both teach the player that there are biomes and how they work in practice (also it helped testing the system obviously), but also it prevents new players from running into a science dead end. There's still incentive to do stuff *in* space, for one it actually gives you far more science even for basic low orbit. If you fail the first couple of times in getting into orbit you still end up somewhere with some science and get to unlock more parts. A new player is likely to miss stuff, especially that there are no tutorials or help messages like "you can click on some parts like the command pod to do an experiment, recover it to kerbin or transmit it back to unlock new parts" regarding science in the game. Even with those he could miss it, but overall by the time he does get into orbit he should probably have it figured out.

Going fast sideways is more important than simply going up. Docking is hard and the concept borderline insane, which makes the fact that you can do it both in real life and in KSP even more amazing.

In the future is the only thing we know about when, as with all things squad plans. It could get added in the next update but the focus is on career mode for now so IMO that is unlikely. Then again who knows, there will be an announcement soon as to what will be the focus of 0.23 as soon as the developers, maybe there will be a new planet thrown into the mix. One thing that has been mentioned is that a planet discovery mechanic would be implemented first before more new planets get added. They will come eventually though. EDIT: The technical problem that prevented adding more new planets has been solved in one of the last few updates. Basically before the game stored all the planet terrain data (or was it textures?) in memory when it didn't need it, like say Eve's terrain when you were at Jool. Now it loads it only when it needs it, also saving on memory use. At least that was my understanding.

I think it would be difficult to have the game properly determine terrain inclination. For one terrain is 3D, then there is the issue that you have multiple small slopes forming bigger slopes and which one exactly would such a feature pick to show it's direction? The biggest one? The most steep one? It would be better for the player if he could see a 3D radar image of the terrain chunk right below him in a separate window, preferably with the option to display terrain shape using just wireframes or a heightmap. But I am not sure if it is possible to "cut out" a chunk out of the whole terrain like that. Although you could have a camera that display a shot of terrain "below" the craft (relative to your point of control) with wireframes shown, or indeed with a relative height-map. Wireframes would give you shape, the heighmapt would tell you where the terrain is most flat (less tone change=more flat). Not sure how much work would that be or if it is indeed possible for technical reasons.

I also agree with Kerbal Alarm Clock, I would also say protractor or similar but KAC mostly has the biggest reason why you need protractor covered, since it gives you time to transfer windows. KAS for fuel lines, power lines and grappling hooks. Those last would be really good to land on something like Gilly and stay put. Makes sense mostly once resources get added with in-situ fuel production which Kethane now allows. At least basic vessel stats in the VAB like from Kerbal Engineer and similar would be nice. Not necessarily delta-v per stage but mass and thrust are a must, seeing how long you can burn the engines at maximum thrust before you drain the tank would be welcome as well. Procedural wings and fairings. Last but not least I would really love seeing stock counterparts of electric propellers or rotors from the firespitter mod along with balloons. Airship probes on Eve or Jool would be fun.

Well we would have to learn to make thin rockets for one and landers that fit inside payload fairings, without hinges I would need to rethink some of my wide and safe lander designs. Also technically we would still get off the ground but it's just that there would be bigger penalties to asparagus staging overkill. But it wouldn't kill it off completely, just make the lifter designs more sane and definitely less wide. Re-entry heat would be a bigger difficulty increase, aerocapture the way it works now would require either heavy heatshields increasing mass and decreasing delta-v. Or it would possibly still be quite lethal so you would have to aerobrake at say laythe at a higher altitude, and burn retrograde after you exit the atmosphere to get into orbit around it since otherwise you risk burning up. It would actually be cool if heatshields were ablative and had a finite amount of heat they can take, meaning you would have to consider not just for the temperature of re-entry but also the duration of it.

I think it is fine, you just need to practice landing inside a crater where it is fairly flat. Those things are big, there's plenty of room. Neil Armstrong didn't just land the LM at then exact spot where his descent trajectory took him to, he had to hover for a bit to find a suitable landing site. Although for him rocks were the issue and not craters.

Yes, the flame effect has a limited distance so that it doesn't tank performance I think. Really long and wide vessels aerobraking most notably only get the red glow and no flames for some of their parts more distant from the very tip of the craft that is in the front.

Well there is of course the issue of having Kerbals chat with mission control. But actually we also really couldn use environmental ambiance sound. Eve, Duna, Jool and Laythe would be far from silent. On Duna sand/dust/soil hitting the craft as fierce wind blows it around, with ice cracking on the Poles as you land or drive on it. The sound of dust being kicked up by rover wheels would follow you as you explore the surface. On Eve you'd hear thunder in the distance and toxic raindrops falling. On Jool the winds and storms would be like nothing you heard anywhere else with their force. On Laythe the volcanoes, geysers and constant super hurricanes would show a far less welcoming face of the ocean world with their roars. It would be like if Iceland volcanism was on steroids with the hurricane-magnet potential of ten Floridas. Also we could use another track or two for space.

I'll reserve my judgment on length for the future, as there will be more to it than just maxing out the tech tree and there will be other factors adding to its length. The science system has its issues, including mechanics that can be exploited quite severely via meta-gaming but the most obvious ones are going to be fixed or reworked. Re-balancing and a few new mechanics should be enough to fix it. I will give it one thing though, it does show how much easier the LV-N and mainsail+double-jumbo make everything. I also think that a big reason why it seems to be easy apart from exploitable mechanics is because only two places have biomes. I imagine that once Duna and most medium to large celestial bodies get those, they will have a slight science yield from experiments decrease, to encourage multiple visits to the same planet or at least landing on the edge of two or more biomes. Currently one properly done Duna mission with an Ike flyby is a very easy source of a large amount of science, both with and without abusing transmissions.

Yes, Kerbal Alarm Clock does that. Pretty nifty mod, though I do believe its functionality should eventually be added into the stock game.

Yeah but that's just for the craft recovery and quite frankly the amount of science you get for it is peanuts, especially compared to what you get from goo or the materials bay experiments made on the way. I don't think it discourages complex missions much to be honest.

There was talk of a prestige mechanics once I think (my memory could be wrong). Doing experiments and in particular reaching new places should grant it. I mean honestly, NASA still gets respect for putting people on the Moon or for the Voyager's and the mars rovers. There's more to exploration than unlocking parts, it's about getting out there in the unknown and learning more about it.

The ability to redo experiment cases is a bit of a backup in case the player finds himself at a science or money-based dead-end. Or so the player doesn't feel as "punished" if he accidentally ends up in the wrong biome.

Many of the points I wanted to make were already made in this topic or elsewhere but I'll try to be a bit original: 1) Tree being too easy to fill out with prior meta-gaming knowledge. That is you can min-max mission design for maximum yield with early and later parts, the most extreme of this being cases of Tier 0 Minmus and Mun flybys in one mission. Min-maxing and any other optimization will always happen and in every game, no matter how good the balance is (also it falls into the area of being knowledge-based challenge, while knowledge-based challenge in games is not really challenging as it doesn't test skill, but I digress), however I think some science components and the materials bay in particular are too light. Doing these large research vessels with multiple materials bays or goo pods is simply too easy by the time you reach the middle of the tree. Also the tree should possibly change with difficulty settings, with parts swapped around a bit. Of course science parts being expensive or other limitations added in the future may kill the science combines that can easily be sent to Duna or Eve. However what should be kept in mind is that the tree should not be a grind, it should simply nudge the player towards going into new places and trying new things, without railroading him into specific missions at specific locations and stages of the game. The openness of the system in how you want to get science (and what to research) are what makes it great (more superlatives and what is good stuff saved for the end of this post). 2) Data transmission is good in principle but needs new mechanics to better flesh out its advantages and disadvantages. Antenna strengths, range and other factors being non-issues for now is the obvious one, as is the fact that the only penalty for not opting to return data is the tediousness of having to click more assuming you have enough power (bar time constraints like transmitting while falling through the atmosphere) to drain the science pool. The most commonly suggested solution is doing a separate total science available pool for returning samples where it makes sense (for goo canisters, soil samples and materials bays) which I support myself. 3) Probe missions versus manned missions. This bit is quite schizophrenic now (no offense to actual schizophrenics meant). On one hand manned missions can do more experiments, although in some cases those could be done with probes with new kinds of parts (cameras for reports, sample scoops for soil sample analysis). On the other there is the issue with transmitting benefiting probes more, as indeed does experiment return in the cases where it can be done. With Kerbal skills added, like obvious geology, physics or other science skills, you could have a bonus to the science gotten from experiments made by kerbals themselves, derived from that skill, in addition to base science value. Of course this bonus would not drain the available science pool from an experiment case, only the base value would so that overall doing science with Kerbals would yield more science as it requires more effort. A geologist will pick the best rock sample, he can after all study the rock in more detail before picking it up than a scoop with robotic cameras can. Being on site has advantages to looking at limited resolution still photos that took minutes to reach Kerbin. The same could apply to having a physics PhD Kerbal or an engineer mess around with a Materials or Goo pod in orbit. With a skill system you can have those kerbals improve in their skills over time, this doesn't need to even be more than one variable increasing with use to make people not only want to use Kerbals but also to get them back home. 4) Long versus short term study. All experiments are instant now, but it doesn't make sense in the case of some. Of course the thing is you can time warp over any waiting element. I mentioned it in another topic, you could have two experiments on a sensor, the instant one and long-term study. Both would have different science pools and yields, but the idea is to have the latter be a smaller but still noticeable amount given after a long period of time since it began. So that most players don't feel terribly forced into time warping for it (some always will). I already said this would need a system for tracking events, kind of like the Alarm Clock mod works, to alert you when you got results you can send back. 5) Spaceplane (parts) feel awkward in Career mode's current form. This can be fixed by adding electric propellers (possibly with balloons) and biomes to other planets, the latter will of course happen but the former would really give incentive to try them out when the biomes get added. Without biomes their only use is on Laythe. This issue also applies to rovers to an extent. Now the other issue would be aerial probes being better than rovers, but airless moons and planets would still give rovers a niche. Also propellers or balloons could be further up the tech tree. Both are IMO very fun concepts of exploration. I think it would be very educational to have them and show that yes, even a balloon and an old tech like a propeller can have a use in space exploration. 6) Space Stations also feel awkward, there is another topic about that so I'll just say that while they should have a science function it should be a secondary reason to get them, with using them for resupplying or refueling the primary one. Here's the post in the other topic where I explain in detail what I mean. The good things about career mode which should be preserved and thus kept in mind when considering making any changes: - Not being depended on clicking once and time warping "to victory". - Requiring effort in getting to places. - Open structure allowing players to pick their own mission profiles, rather than railroading them into set paths with excessive science requirements for unlocking nodes. - Encouraging players to visit new places rather than grind in the same location, giving incentive to land in those unique regions of planets Squad crafted like Dunar poles (when Duna gets biomes). - discovering experiment results and reading them is fun, which ties into the point above. Also while some results are silly in typical kerbal fashion some are quite educational in part. I am really, really pleased with all those good things I mentioned above. It was a positive surprise to see a system like this, rather than one of spend money, have guys research tech, get it. This is overall a very solid piece of game design that of course needs fleshing out, polish and tweaking but overall really great in how it interacts with the player and what it makes it do, most importantly taking the best part of the game which is allowing the player to do things his own way, with what he wants, where he wants and how he wants within the limits of available parts and (in the future) budget and other available resources.