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We're waiting on the plugins and I have to finish one more engine for this release to happen. Can't really give an estimate though, plugins are out of my control.

No. Significant work yet to be done with plugins and some content is yet to be added.

Fundamental cause with improper loading is still there, HW21 and every single other heavy radial-attached part is still being loaded with significant delay causing displacement and potential snapping. And we can easily make it explode in a test even without CoMOffset. But if that change helps you, great, we can include it into the next release. Just don't be surprised if the issue will arise again, it can only be properly fixed by developers, unfortunately.

And some ingame screenshots (album):

Some sneak peaks of new content arriving in version 2.6. Update: And some ingame screenshots (album): More example crafts will be added in 2.6. I think you just need more lift, that is quite heavy payload. And keep an eye on CoM, if it's too far in the front you won't be able to lift your nose even if you technically have enough lift. Because there is no efficient way to manage large crews in EVA and there is zero fun in being able to carry entire team of your whole space program in one crewtank. Crewtanks are large enough for use in crew ferrying spaceplanes and for other applications like that, and building a passenger jet capable of carrying 100 kerbals is a cheap and pointless exercise. It can't be used for any additional loads like fuel because KSP employs faulty mass-dependent drag model. Effect of it is multiplied by intake module, resulting in intakes of significant mass producing ridiculous levels of drag. We have used some workarounds to return S2W intake to reasonable drag levels while maintaining mass needed for proper connections, but I don't think that pushing these tricks further is a good idea. There are plenty of parts to carry fuel and crew anyway. Not only that, it powers some other stuff and can be useful for anything from functional IVA toggles for staging to airbrakes and from fully controllable VTOL engine rotation to joystick in IVA moving with user input. It's a powerful tool. No, they are using multiple other mods and as I've said most of them weren't flyable in the first place. Reference well-built crafts from Taverius instead.

Uh, why would you not read the description of that engine or take a closer look at it? It was specifically designed to the keep the center of thrust precisely in the same point for both orientations, so stock CoT marker from SPH/VAB is correct.

All structural parts weigh as much as necessary for KSP physics to work properly with them. Lowering their mass will severely compromise the strength of their connection to other parts, don't do that. A fuselage can hold a certain amount of fuel depending on it's cross-section and length of the fuel tank. We are calculating fuel tank capacity from true volume of our fuselage sections, nothing to tune here. The resulting total mass of fuel tanks is not determined by us, we are only determining empty tank mass and KSP adds the rest depending on amount of fuel. Naturally, large tanks would be heavy, and our fuselages are very large. S2 is almost 2.5m in diameter, same as orange tanks. HL fuselage system is 3.75m sans side cuts. You can't realistically expect these parts to weigh as little as puny stock spaceplane parts do. To be able to support the fuel tanks from those fuselage systems, structural parts have to be of proper weight, otherwise connections will be very, very prone to breaking. You saw how low mass worked out in the 2.0 release, it's not the proper way to do things and it's not fun to have your planes falling apart from the slightest stress. Besides, look at example crafts, they are never using any sort of wing spam or intake spam and take off perfectly fine utilizing up to half of the runway. I honestly don't understand why the hell would you want to lower the mass of the parts if there isn't a problem with taking off in the first place. No one seems to complain about structural parts from KW Rocketry weighting up to six tons for precisely the same reasons. Also, the mass of wings and intakes should NEVER be used as reference, because KSP is using faulty mass-dependent drag model and these part types always have their mass set depending on the required drag levels, completely irregardless of their size or volume. That was a placeholder value that had nothing to do with true volume of the fuel tank and it was rightly changed.

Yes. Unfortunately, KSP does not support multiple animations affecting the same entity, so shielding animation is completely removed. No way around it. Yes, planned, and already done. It will come in 2m and 6m variety. There will also be S2 widebody cargo bay that is so enormous you can probably fit another plane into it.

Smaller versions of legs aren't planned as clearance with existing ones is already so tiny it necessitated adding a low-profile engine. Stock legs are easier to use and more appropriate for smaller/lighter crafts. 2.6 is coming along nicely, with quite a mountain of new content. Can't give ETA, but SABRE are more or less done, and other content is at around 70%.

Alright, we'll look into the changes made to it after 2.3.

Are you saying what I think you're saying?

It works just like the real one, with two modes and all that fancy stuff. And it's not just my work, Taverius was preparing them for a long time, - I have just provided an art pass to make them pretty. Yes, you can. I think we will use the plugin to connect the state of intake to speed (it should be 100% opened on the ground, 20% opened before transition from ramjets, and fully closed on speeds close to orbital. But even if that plugin won't be ready for the next release, I will still leave the animation as simple right-click toggle for roleplaying purposes.

Even six kerbals is quite large amount and complete overkill for most situations. There is no way to conveniently control large crews in the game, and being able to carry all personnel of your space program in one tiny spaceplane isn't particularly challenging or interesting. Additionally, if we're talking about changing length instead of changing crew capacity, there is no point in making fuselage sections shorter as KSP physics will make your craft increasingly unstable the shorter your fuselage components are. Wings can't be used for fuel storage because KSP handles fuel flow from them improperly, affecting radially attached engines. As about the weight of the structural parts, I repeat, we are using values calculated in conjunction with other stuff like crash tolerances to work around the physics in KSP and ensure craft won't fall apart every minute. You can't do anything about that until physics/aerodynamic model in KSP will be changed. Fortunately, there is no difference in difficulty between those new fuselage systems and tiny stock ones, as with the size comes the fuel to feed more than enough engines and attach more than enough wings to make a very good plane. Check how controllable and easy to fly D-175 example craft is, for instance. Because there are dedicated part for that and any kind of fuel automatically adds additional weight so you will end up with even heavier part if you will start cramming resources into it. Additionally, not everyone needs a particular type of resources, so we will have to clutter everything with half a dozen types of every adapter filled with different types of fuel, which is not really desirable. Sounds like a design problem and not a part problem. Example crafts easily take off from half the runway or less and they are not using any kind of cheaty wing spamming or other tricks. Check them for ideas. Currently available VTOL engine is using LFO and was made to operate in vacuum, so using them on atmospheric craft is quite a waste of fuel and hardly practical. We will be adding specially balanced atmospheric VTOL to next releases though.

Coming soon along with other updates and additions!

Disable fallback shaders in your graphics options. I have launched a huge hangar into orbit already (24x64x80m, if I remember correctly) - with docking clamps, lights and stuff. No HyperEdit either, parts are lightweight and simple, you're not launching 8 meter fuel tanks, after all. All you need is a VERY balanced launcher straight in the middle. It's also convenient that you can cram your rockets right into the hollow area of your hangar, making large structures like that potentially more stable on ascent then long multi-stage rockets. What you need though is EdTools plugin to make VAB/SPH larger and improve the editing tools a bit.

Weight is essential to control the breakability of parts in the current KSP physics model. Large parts with small weight won't work properly and your craft will constantly snap. I don't see much of a problem here, though, as with large volumes come large amounts of fuel and with lots of fuel you can allow yourself to use powerful propulsion.

Then these explosions on loading/coming out of warp are caused by stock game issue. Partial solution is to strut your wing-mounted engines to other parts to give physics system more connections to check. Fundamentally, though, it's up to Squad to fix the problem with parts loading at different time or velocity, causing them to break off. If something exploded, chances are something in the back of your craft came off, collision detection kicked in and that part crashed into another. Stock implementation of ASAS/avionics is very basic and often overcompensating/imprecise, there is only so much you can get from it and it works better with small spacecraft. I'd recommend to use far superior MechJeb control modes, like KILLROT or SURF.

In the previous post you have mentioned you are using version 2.4. If that's the case, we can only recommend you to download the latest version: exploding wings were fixed in 2.5. Craft loading bug from the stock game, happened to me many times even with all-stock crafts. Reload a couple of times. Sometimes the crafts are subjected to weird force on loading, causing parts to break off. You can notice it on almost every loading, even successful one, when low-tolerance parts like stock landing legs move around a bit.

Nope, everything should work fine without FAR, the stock game just won't recognize additional parameters in the config that are used by FAR plugin, ignoring them.

Thanks for reports about spaceport. Goddamnit, just when I have thought everyone would be able to download a working version. Uploading to mediafire. Edit: Apparently it's not corrupted, hahhhhahahahaha: Here is mirror: http://www./download.php?f2kspqm3pn6f12l

What's there to animate in protective railings? As about S2-sized control parts, I'm only planning on SAS, as it's using reaction wheels or something and can't realistically be placed radially. ASAS/ACU are flight computers and they works as radially attached parts just fine, eliminating the need for lots of fuselage-specific variations.

Are you, by any chance, using a raised brightness value in the graphics options? I have never noticed any readability problems with the screens, in any IVA.

Overwrite everything, and don't forget to detach and reattach MK5 cockpit everywhere you have used it previously. Other than that, nope, nothing will break.