allmappedout

Of course; after the first time you do it, ever. If its only a couple of minutes though, forcing all users to have to do it once will give a sound flat playing field of knowledge to build From.

I understand the gameplay precedent behind it, but there's a very simple way of solving this: A forced, guided, build-to-orbit tutorial. ie: Werner von Kerman starts off introducing you at the point where we're 'just about to build the first rocket to leave the atmosphere!', and it goes through the steps of how the VAB works, and so on, and forces you to build a simple rocket which will always be the same as everyone else's, and then talks you through launch and controls and so on. The first rocket then is a probe-based rocket, and you accomplish a defined set of goal, guide the new player, whilst also teaching them the importance of things like power/batteries for probes, and what each part of the rocket does, such as SAS and so on. Whilst it won't be any fun for those of us who know what we're doing, if it's a) quick simple and c) standardised, it will give you a good grounding in the very basics. I'm thinking along the lines of the scripted first mission of the new XCOM game, whereby your squad had to move to specific places, and scripted events happen. By doing this, it shows the game mechanics, and means players don't get sidetracked. The upshot of this is that 1. Probes come first but 2. your first actual, controlled flight could be a manned one now. I do really, really like the idea of having a mission control-style IVA screen for probes which was mentioned above to keep the kerbal immersion there as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft AFAIK, they never flew on nuclear power. How would a Nuclear jet even work? Since a NERVA works without requiring oxidiser (in real life, rather than in game), what's the benefit of adding air intakes to it, unless it's to generate some sort of explosion from a superheated fuel-air mixture?

The thing is though, the reason they sent probes up first wasn't because it was safer, but because it was easier. A probe can be lighter, and require less dV to get there than an entire pod complete with life support, etc etc, and you don't have to worry about getting said probe back safely without being branded a heartless murderer Personally I think it'd be better to have probes come first, just because I think it makes both historical, gameplay and progression sense. Importantly, you know that a probe is electronic, so a newbie is going to think that it will need a battery to function and won't be surprised when it stops moving it doesn't have it. On the other hand, when your reaction wheels die in your pod, you may not understand why you now can't control your ship. And lastly, starting without kerbals means that you can't farm science quite as quickly since you can't collect samples from everywhere which appears to be one of the best ways to gain science. I want small gains in science early on. Rocketry was iterative and the initial stages of the tree shouldn't be so trivial to open (but on the other hand I still feel the parts need moving around a bit more, as I think we should be starting with SRBs before liquid rockets, but that's because I'm thinking that you start with a V-2 and end with a Saturn V).

I have two voyager probes which are on very hyperbolic trajectories out of the kerbol system, both in opposite directions. Last time I checked they were way, way beyond Eeloo, and still travelling at around 8km/s, but even at the largest time warp they were barely slowing down, since Kerbol's gravity was so weak, but it was only equipped with an ion drive so slowing down was out of the question too! Closest I've been was a Moho mission which ran out of fuel after I messed up a slingshot around Eve and put me into a pretty elliptic orbit near Kerbol. Nowhere near as close as some others in this thread

Of course, the issue with being landed of course, is that there is a significant amount of time you may not be pointing at Kerbin, which begs the question as to whether you then build in a mechanic about when you can send data. At least whilst in orbit you're going round fast enough that you're going to have direct LoS with Kerbin at least once every few hours or so, whereas if you're landed you could be waiting days or weeks (particularly if you landed on a tidally locked body which had its parent in the way, for example). Still, the idea itself isn't bad, and since something like this already appears with the tracking station (it apparently points at objects in space and realigns to others once it drifts out of range), sounds like it should be possible.

In the ideas and suggestions forum: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/44952-Already-Suggested-List

With the Science now (soon to be) brought in, I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but I'd like a mission designer, so that you can set your goals prior to launch and then ensure you don't forget to do anything on the way. However, mostly, I just want a new Aerodynamics model and robotics.

You could always try flying this somewhere with a launch vehicle and using it as a return vehicle, Eve being the obvious candidate..

Good luck! I'm thinking of doing some streaming of KSP next month as part of Desert Bus for Hope (http://desertbus.org/), so let me know how your streaming goes!

Speaking of which...When is Nova coming back off 'leave'?

I quite like the idea. I guess my question is thus; can you see the goals required to obtain said item? As you say, breakthroughs happen when they're unexpected, so my first thought was that these parts don't appear on the tech tree until the task associated with them has been completed. Obviously it makes it then harder to find these new parts (as a result I'd probably leave some of the parts as nice-to-have only rather than anything critical to proceeding down the tech tree), but the sense of discovery would be better, and, if they're on the tree already, then it's basically still a grind; taking Hitman Absolution for an example - it tells you all the cool ways you can kill people in the mission statements....which kind of takes away from the fun of figuring them out for yourself.

Either that, or he means that when rotating the camera it doesn't rotate the kerbal automatically, which I presume is how the system works.

It does appear that a lot of odd choices have been made on the tech tree. I for one am very intruiged to see what the rationale behind it is. The idea of launching your first probe, Sputnik style though, still won't be much cop without decouplers. Perhaps the screenshot is a deliberate act of misdirection by the devs?

Indeed, there was a Moho in Manchester (not related to Montreal steak, unfortunately!) as well, but it's changed its name since..

of course it's not, but at the same time making it even less forgiving may put a significant audience off. Also, given that the main thrust of the argument is surrounding the technical impracticality of implementing this (as Kerbart says - it's not a partial opt-in), as well as a very divisive thing which a lot of people have a lack of appetite for, and it seems to be this is a non-starter.

Procedural everything! But yes, I agree also, the launch clamps, whilst they work really well for the most part, are a bit inflexible at times and the lack of lateral distance does hinder some designs.

Pleased as punch that Harv answered my questions! Shame, but I'm sure it'll work out well enough - the second point I raised in the questions seems to be much more positive news about how the experiments you can perform are dependent on where you are and what you're doing. It makes me wonder whether there is a list of possible mission types you can undertake, or whether you're free to fire something off to somewhere and run a set of experiments and get science regardless of whether you had a plan in the first place ie: I'm at moho...might as well scan for an atmosphere! Oh there isn't one, never mind! SCIENCE! I guess it's a valid experiment... And there's the question of repeatability. I was discussing in another thread about instrument quality and whether this affects the level of science you unlock. Another way of looking at it is the resolution of such discoveries; perhaps scanning the mun early on from 100km with a rubbish camera will give you some grainy photos, but you could launch a later device with higher quality instruments and make detailed readings of the trace atmosphere and take high-rest photos with 50cm resolution, etc. Particularly the latter part of that, it is essentially the same experiment, but different end result. I suppose the concern is would it be spammable (ie: is there a rate of return curve?) and even if not, are there some missions which are more valuable than others? ie: for a given mission cost can I get to Minmus and get more science than the Mun, or can I do it for cheaper, or in less time, etc etc

There are already a couple of discussions similarly themed at the moment. I am hoping for a very deep and rewarding system. Whilst I don't expect it to necessarily be in the first iteration, there's a lot of potential there and I hope that some of these ideas are taken on board.

That can only be a good thing. Plus once the infrastructure is in place, it'll be cool to see how the mod community handles it all.

Well, you say of course, but like we were mentioning above, Curiosity isn't coming back to Earth ( ), but is still providing valuable science off the back of samples, and doing all the experiments in-situ that we would do back here. Getting moon rock back to Earth was important in the 70s because we were limited by the amount of time astronauts could spend there, so doing the research into it was a time factor. But given how modern scientific investigation goes now, there's little to no difference between the scientific equipment on Earth and the top of the range stuff attached to a rover. Saying that, it gives me an idea that potentially you could have different quality bits of equipment; do you want a basic overview? Take a camera, do you want detailed analysis, mass spec, etc etc - weight/electricity become issues to build into your model as well then.

I guess we will have to wait and see. Obviously I'm very excited about the science feature, I just hope that what's delivered is just the beginning as there's so much they can do to flesh out how it works, and since ScienceTM is pretty much the overriding reason people go to space today, I'd like to see it being a full and exciting feature.

I agree, I actually made a post about this very recently here where I think that you should have difference sub-disciplines of science to help focus your research.

That's certainly true for a lot of it, but there are significant improvements in Materials Science, certain fuels, computing and modelling, etc. which can open up new avenues for research (Carbon Fibre being a key example) But yes, you're right, the theory behind it was very much well established very early on. Obviously new types of propulsion can appear off the back of advances, such as VASIMIR, SABRE, NERVA, etc, but even Aerospikes, which are seen as a very good solution to space flight SSTO issues, were theorised right at the beginning. Perhaps there could be two tiers of tech-tree; one for improvements of current technology, and one for advancements in propulsion as they are realised? It's a very, very large area to cover off and whatever occurs, not everyone will be completely satisifed in its implementation

That's a very good point which I hadn't considered! It would make using a skycrane even more imperative if you could then use said crane to lift the rover back to Kerbin! Although to be fair, most rovers have a lot of on-board spectrometers, magic and widgetstm to do the science there, which I suppose would preclude the samples needing to be brought back (ie: the same experiments would be run back home). I always see samples being brought back as mostly a prestige thing, and whilst I understand the gameplay benefit of rewarding a successful return mission with samples, if the science can be done in-situ, that's usually almost as good, if not as good, as having it back on Earth (particularly looking at Curiosity here, which is car sized and full to the brim with gubbins).