Amaroq

Facepalm. Why didn't I think of that!?!

Yeah, but ignoring the "IVA" side of things, isn't space the perfect venue for three-D? I mean, getting a 3D impression of a planet from space would be much more impressive, in my mind, than a 3D first-person shooter.

I'm not yet convinced that the multiseat pods are useless -- for any "rescue" mission, I want one, typically, starting with one crew aboard and picking up one or more crew over the mission. Similarly, anytime I want to bring crew to or from a location. They allow mission construction like: Mk1-2 and Hitchiker "Apollo command module", mutliple single-man "land-and-return" vessels; the land-and-return vessels can be ditched while the entire crew comes home in the Apollo command module. That's a brilliant idea, honestly -- it works much better for my mind to have "geologist", "chemist", "biologist", than a generic "scientist" class. Its simple and easy to explain, should be fairly straightforward to implement, and directly solves the issue at hand.

TeeGee, for a straight rocket lift, my FAR launches tend to run as: Max thrust from launchpad to terminal velocity (usually around 105 m/s, as I'm in thick atmosphere) Throttle down to a TWR-Throttle of 1.2 according to Kerbal Engineer Redux (in practice, I rattle between 1.15 and 1.25) Initiate very gentle gravity turn - I'm still below 1,000m, so maybe 5 degrees off the bat, but the turn will continue as I keep gaining altitude. Once at or around 10,000m, throttle up, usually to max, which is around 1.6-1.7 TWR for my lift stage. With FAR, the issues are -- too much throttle too early gives you tremendous drag due to the thickness of atmosphere, and any non-gentle turn gives you side-forces that exceed the capacity of your winglets, gimbals, and reaction wheels to counter. So, "slow and gentle" is the approach. Of course, by the time you're up around 50km, you're aimed at the horizon and at full throttle, just like a stock launch .. its just a different technique in the 0-40km range.

Suggestion -- can you add a "rename" feature, e.g., so that I can rename "Custom01" to provide my own descriptive name for that action group? Suggestion -- for a feature like "context edit", you may want to load from a saved config file, users who don't want it can unlink it from the menu, those who do want it can keep it. Or, see the way Kerbal Engineer Redux handles its "Settings" menu for inspiration.

Ahhh, very interesting. At this point, I don't think you're a "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" thread anymore. I suggest you report the laggy docking ports to the modder who created them, and indicate your issue.

Yeah -- for this reason, I find it pretty important to have some standard action-group mappings across each of my vessels. I've settled on groupings like: "Prepare for Orbital Maneuvering" "Interplanetary or On-station" "Prepare for Aerodynamic Flight or Re-entry" "Prepare for Landing" "Prepare for Takeoff" With a couple reserved along the lines of: "Start Science" "End Science" "Start Special Function" (e.g., Kethane) "Stop Special Function" "Derelict / Power-Recovery Mode"

Either consider them to be very large windows -- or elect a shorter time of flight. E.g., if you set up the Jool returns at 160-320 days, thats a different chart with some distinct windows; similarly, if your Eeloo returns are 275 to 650 days and you aim for a delta-V under 1,100 m/s, then you pick up some real transfer windows again. Just add a note at the bottom that you the return transfer windows from Jool and Eeloo are "soft", and that there's almost always a decently cheap departure for a craft willing to take a slow transfer in. Alternately, un-check "No insertion burn" and run with THOSE windows, which are a lot more strict. (And more expensive)

I have a two-year-old, and so far, she is fascinated by laying back on our backs and looking at stars. She loves that she can identify a couple planets (Mars, by hue, Venus on brightness), and has "visited" those planets in KSP. (Well, watching Daddy play KSP, but still.) Last night we saw a meteor, which introduced the idea of how far away the atmosphere ends -- how we could breathe when we went up in the mountains, so the meteor must have been much higher than that .. how it was going faster than anything she could throw, and yes, faster than a car, in fact so fast that it go too hot and blew up. (It was a strange one, almost a direct-down impact rather than a typical streak-across-the-sky). She's doin' pretty good for two, I'd say!

Fun read! Thoroughly enjoyed it, and yeah, before playing KSP it would've lost me very early on .. or at least, I wouldn't have appreciated the difficulties implied by the words (or gotten the jokes in the anecdotes!)

I don't know that I'd call that a limiting factor for the Science Lab and Zoology Bay -- many of us would be happy to assume the "role-play" factor of trying to ensure that we have sufficient electric charge. I can see why (with the massive power consumption) you've made it a requirement for the Cyclotron, but I think you'd be okay running moderate power requirements for the Science Lab and Zoology Bay. 1. For those that are inclined to time-warp/unattented, it doesn't provide any additional game-balance limitations, so no harm, no foul. 2. For those of us that are inclined to at least sit on our station running experiments and/or make sure our station can make a pass across the "dark side" of its orbit without running down to zero before jumping to warp/unattended, it does provide an additional limitation/requirement. 3. For those of us that like role-play, it provides an additional reason for our stations to have those massive solar panel arrays. I think #2 and #3 add "fun", and as long as you aren't powering UP the science return in exchange for the new power requirements, you don't have any game-balance issues. Regarding the low-orbit / high-orbit crossover, maybe you just want to kick up a warning dialog anytime the user starts an experiment on a vessel whose Apoapsis or Periapsis is in a different orbit? E.g., the 249-251 crossover, but equally useful if I'm on an escape trajectory or an oblique ellipse on some other planet? User can ignore or continue the experiment, with the warning dialog reminding them not to count on an unattended run of this experiment.

Heh, I'm exactly the opposite of Justin Kerbice. You know how lazy people can be, let them download and install everything in a single block rather than having to install each component-group separately. Though, I think a big chunk of that depends on the size of the pack and the logical-relatedness of them -- for example, I'd be happy to download an "electronics" pack with 5 batteries and 8 solar panels, and a "structural" pack with 20 strut-and-truss combinations .. but if you had 1 battery, 2 solar panels, and 3 structural parts, I'd rather get those as one pack instead of 3 different packs. Use your judgment.

Fair enough! All I meant was, your hypothetical reader may not need a popup every 15 minutes, there are less-visual-clutter approaches to the same problem. I've just gone down a path more along the lines of "writing good notes to myself in the KAC 'notes' field for an alarm". I've even started using that just for notes about things, with no ship really required (though of course, hooked to one via KAC), such as "Jool Transfer Window in 7 days" -- "Verify that you've got everything in place and launch any manned craft you intended to send.."

Oooh, please do!

That's exactly what I use K.E.R. for. Its got plenty of good data displays about your Orbit, your Vessel, and your Rendezvous; I can manually plot and pilot an interplanetary burn using just the K.E.R. output. Padishar, I rate "TWR (Throttle)" as one of the most important pieces of output during launch, as I'll throttle down to keep my TWR around 1.2 when I'm in the low atmosphere, and throttle up as I clear through my gravity turn .. please don't remove that one in favor of TWR (Max)

That's a solved design problem, you can google answers to it. Note that as long as they are distinguishable from each other, you're okay -- so different saturation comes out darker/lighter and can be distinguishable.

Red Iron -- anything other than a version number is prone to breakage, for example, when some ambitious developer decides to release two or more versions on the same date. (Either due to ambition, or due to the need for an immediate bug-fix.) O.P., you haven't really done much to indicate why you think this is such a "significant improvement for end-users"; rather than trying to minimize the impact your proposal will have on ferram and the other mod developers, why don't you paint a picture of how this improves things for all of us? What are you trying to accomplish with this?

For those of you on a MacBook, please check "System Preferences", "Energy Saver", and ensure that you have "Automatic graphics switching" disabled. This forces the laptop to use the better of its two graphics cards, rather than trying to push KSP/Unity through the low-end graphics card.

A couple of notes on Kerbal Alarm Clock -- it has a setting you can do without a maneuver node, just specifying by "time", I tend to do that for my flotillas. Also, there's no need to put your launch alarms "on top of" each other as you describe. For example, my next Jool transfer window opens in +222 days, and lasts something like 8 days, so I've got my first alarm set on +222d, and all the subsequent craft alarms on +226d, so that I get a single popup when the window opens, and have all the other craft in list-form in KAC.

My advice would be, at most mention that it works differently in stock KSP, and recommend that the reader utilize F.A.R. again, as you do in your section about drag and fairings.

Ahh, thanks for the update, and my apologies; I thought you were more than an orbit away in that shot. Clearly if you don't get the SOI change displayed prior to the SOI change, that's an issue. Interesting question for you: does Kerbal Alarm Clock pick up the SOI change in advance?

Very nice idea, Scripto23. Opening it up to the community in that way sounds pretty much perfect.

Umm, yeah, usually people complain about things not working in "career mode"; I can guarantee from personal experience that F.A.R. works in Sandbox...

O.P., in my opinion RemoteTech is fabulous for three things: one, being "forced" to set up communications networks adds a whole set of fun missions. Two, managing a flight on a long communications delay adds a fun challenge. Three, missions going "wrong" due to communications gaffes adds another fun Kerbal way to blow things up. Given that you're already good at part-editing vessels using a text editor, don't worry about finding that daunting. Note also that a lot of your vessels "may just work" already, e.g., probe cores with antennas built-in, any station or satellite which you gave an antenna or commdish to "just for looks", etc. I'd say, duplicate your save game file, install RemoteTech, and see how it goes ... if worst comes to worst and you hate it, you've got your save file backup to revert to.

Fabulous list, John Crichton, I think I may need to take your advice on those of it which I don't have installed. My must-haves are Kerbal Engineer Redux, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Ferram Aerospace Research, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, and RemoteTech.