allmappedout

Holy smokes, you're a forum god! You actually summoned him!

What I'd also like is the ability to have multiple screens of data from KSP, for example, map view on screen 2, and the rocket on screen 1. So not only could you see the impact of your burns, whilst still watching your lovely rocket, but you'd get a bit of a mission control feeling as well.

I agree that it would be good to 'plan' a mission, and from the looks of the UI this could be something that could be built into a contract (ie: bring back x science from y body) but as vexx says, you shouldn't be able to plan a mission until you have 'scouted' the planet/moon with some sort of 'probe' or mission.

What an excellent, well written post. I always felt a bit uneasy about the idea of reputation being interchangable, but the way it's described above is very well thought out and adds a lot of depth to the concept.

What would be much, much better, would be you fly experiments up to a space station and perform them, but they can only be performed on a space station module (ie: the big science lab). Each experiment gives you a fixed amount of science, but it is a one-shot thing, and there's a cost/weight/difficulty built into each one so that they can't all be run straight away to just max the skill tree. That's how science works in real life, and it makes sense, particularly with contracts and the proposed interchangability of money and science.

It'd also be really useful in accident scenarios where you lose one of your engines (how careless!), and you have to try to rebalance thrust, or something similar.

Absolutely - I think it's something that has already been incorporated into KerbalEdu, so I'm hoping that some of it will port back into one of our releases as well as the flight engineer stuff that they have put in (ie: measuring KE vs PE, etc) It's not as bad as you think, once you're used to it - the maneuveur nodes and closest approach markers provide a lot of the info/requirements you need. I think one thing that you miss are readouts for the orbital period, for example, as that would be useful, but, at least within the same SOI, you can definitely eyeball a node and adjust it. I find that the game doesn't quite provide enough for interplanetary stuff yet though (there's no real way to work out your ejection angle or phase angle, except, again, by eyeballing it), and at those distances it's very difficult to work out what to adjust. I think some improvement on that data (and maybe a tutorial on how to use it) would help a lot of people break out of Kerbin's SOI for the first (and hopefully not last!) time.

The issue with engines is that unless you want them to all look basically identical, the game would have to, on the fly, generate new texture mappings for them, and, as with your suggestion for multiple nozzles, etc, this could be extremely difficult, intensive, or at least, bloaty. It works with wings because all the wings are effectively the same, just re-sized and shaped. Similarly with fuel tanks, it's the same tank but stretched. With engines as different as you're suggesting, it is certainly non-trivial.

DS9! Nice! Very impressive; I like the small defiant as well!

I totally agree with Karolus - the ability to setup a series of events to occur as part of staging would be excellent. Furthermore, some sort of timer would be great too (for example, decouple, then 0.5 seconds later engage sepratrons, or decouple, drift for 5 seconds out of the fairing, then engage solar panels).

When I saw the title of this thread, I was going to make a joke about how you might want to check with Isaac Newton first...

Where's that electricity going to come from? big batteries? solar panels? (whilst I get they'll be more efficient, you'll struggle to run on full power unless you're taking the heavy XLs). For the TWR loss, you'll have to burn for longer, even if it is far more efficient, and xenon won't be your problem, it'll be electricity, I predict. But that's just me being a naysayer! I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong

It seems sir, you were right! (or there abouts!)

Yes to all the above suggestions! Micro parts need love too!

I don't know why it has to be VAB/SPH only though - if my mission goes wrong, I might need my decoupler to detatch, or my escape tower to come off a bit earlier/later (otherwise I will not go to space today). It's a really good idea, just not sure why you would want to limit it to not be tweakable in flight.

Something like this would be better diagnosed with a picture or the .craft file - can you provide these?

Until you slow down and the asteroid careers into the back of your ship?

Is this not simply a case of the force of the decouplers not transferring when you use struts? It's definitely a known issue, but not a game changer - just attach some sepratrons to the devices and Robert is your Mother's Brother.

I'm with the OP. The absence of a result is still a result and is as scientifically useful as discovering something is there. The moon has a trace atmosphere (or outgassing, if we're being very precise), but it's still scientifically interesting to find out what those gasses are! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_the_Moon

Since Ferram brought out KJR, I have built far more serial spacecraft, and I enjoy building like that - Asparagus feels too easy with KJR (as the ship doesn't tend to shake itself apart), and I like the challenge of things like getting burn times on SRBs right so that the TWR of the remaining rocket is sufficient, etc etc.

The probe option really is the best bet - it's less than 0.5t extra, and let's be honest, if you're running a mission with such precision that 0.5t will be the difference between landing and not, you probably need to re-evaluate part of your mission profile.

I just wish the Kerbals weren't so short that they could see over the dashboard! very hard to do a slight pitch up landing to reduce speed, as you lose sight of the horizon!

I just love how all these near misses show you really how fast things are going in orbit! You never get the appreciation for how fast orbit is until something whooshes past your face and is gone before you realise it was there!

Did anyone notice in there a certain post by a bac9? Could it be.....?

When I read the title, I first thought it was a lame attempt at a Cold War-era personals dating message!