simonh

I'm playing GPP at the moment, but as with the stock system I ignore the home planet's second moon. Minmus makes stock science mode way too easy, and GPP is also a more fun challenge this way.

If you right click the Apoapsis or Periapsis point, it will pin the time-to and altitude indicators for you. I haven’t found out how to un-pin them though. Oh well, step by step. You can force it by switching to the tracking station and back again.

I've just been trying this out in 1.8.1 in my Galileo Planet Pack build and it works wonderfully. It is a bit OP but tons of fun. I just built myself and Eagle and flew it to orbit with the theme music playing the the background. Awesome! I did tune down the aft vertical thrusters to 95% for better balance. I also needed to adjust the landing legs a bit using the move tool to get them in position I added a few small reaction wheels hidden at the base of the landing legs for better controllability. Don't forget a few solar panels or RTGs for electrical power. I don't think there's a built-in antenna I'm not sure all the weird fuel types are all for so i may end up hacking the config, but we'll see. I'm just having tons of fun flying an Eagle around, balance can go hang.

The original KER hasn't been updated since May last year, but there's a fork that's being actively maintained and has 1.4.x compatibility here: https://github.com/jrbudda/KerbalEngineer/releases The talented, heroic, ever popular developer jrbudda is active on this thread. Simon Hibbs

This is a really nice idea. How would it work though? You'd need to be able to specify the destination on transmitting science. * How would valid destinations be registered or discovered? They would have to both be able to store science, and also be reachable from the current vessel through the comms network. Does the comms system API provide the information that would be needed? * Would all possible reachable stores of science be selectable? That could be a lot. If not all, how should the system choose which ones to present as options? One way to do this would be to provide a new science transceiver part that can receive transmitted science. Then when you transmit science if no such transceiver is reachable it just goes 'home'. If one or more are reachable then a dialog pops up with buttons for 'Home' and the names of each reachable vessel with a transceiver (or 'MyVessel Transceiver 1; MyVessel Transceiver 2', etc if more than one transciever). The science goes to the transceiver part, then you switch to the vessel and transfer it to the science lab or whatever. Its not necessarily trivial. BTW you should really use a more descriptive subject line. Even just 'Science transmission mod suggestion' would have been a thousand percent more useful. Simon Hibbs

I think DLC that simply extends the existing game as it's played by most players is weak sauce. Mods and refinements of the core game fulfil that role already. I do think many of the things currently provided by mods should be added to the core game, such as more parts, joints, visual enhancements etc because that way they will be fully supported and updated along with the rest of the game. That's not enough to justify paying for it though. Most of the ideas suggested so far are just tweaks to existing gameplay. That's not enough to justify a further price tag. IMHO paid DLC should be reserved for things that fundamentally change the game experience and enable new ways to play. DLC should provide entirely new, extensive game play modes along with parts and game mechanics to go with it. E.g. A whole scad of new/alternate planetary systems, maybe customisable or randomised, which provide new kinds of challenges and parts or gameplay modes to accompany them. Maybe Interstellar travel along with the above, with resource harvesting to manufacture parts and ability to construct VAB like assembly sites in a new system or take one there. Whole-game riskins such as a thorough going steampunk redesign of everything, far beyond just re-skinnng of the standard parts. These should include entirely new parts sets from scratch, plus new themed planetary systems. Steampunk is obvious, with Victorian space-romance takes on the planetary system. Another might be an all robot alternate reality game where you are an AI and design and build your own robo kerbals with their own parts and tech tree as well as a new themed rocket parts set. Its got to be dramatc. The downisde risk of this sort of thing though is that major gameplay changing DLCs will each only appeal to subsets of the player base. It's quite likely they will stick closely to the core game to stay appealing to a broad audience, but that sort of conservatism will constrain the possibilities quite a lot. tye upcoming expansion is at the conservative end. It does offer new gameplay and mechanics. So it does pass that test for me, but only just. Even so I wish them well, it's a worthy project. For further expansions I'd like to see more ambition and therefore value. Simon Hibbs

I don't understand the logic of tying this app to a purchase of KSP. Why would Squad want to do that? If they made the app free to owners of KSP then letting anyone use it could be useful advertising without sacrificing any revenue. Personally I think such an app would be a more viable project if it was sold separately. That way it wouldn't draw development funding and resources away from work on the main game. But if it's going to be free, what's the point of an unlock code? What's it there to prevent, that would harm Squad or KSP? Simon Hibbs

The idea of a Goldilocks Zone is of limited use, we've learned a huge amount since the idea became popular. Back then we didn't know about the biomes supported by ocean floor volcanic vents, or radiation resistant bacteria, or many if the other extremophiles that live in environments on Earth previously considered completely inimical to life. The core idea that an earth like world requires liquid water and that the 'habitable zone' is the best place to find it in an arbitrary planetary system is sound, but it's not the whole story anymore by a long way. Since then we've discovered a liquid ocean on Europa, geysers indicating pockets of liquid water on Ganymede and a few other possible hideouts for life far outside our solar system's 'habitable zone'. if your looking for the most likely planets to support Earth like planets and technological civilization the Goldilocks Zone is still a useful rule of thumb, but we've found so many exceptions to the rule in our own solar system that it's no longer the prescriptive limit for life it was once thought to be. On that score it's really not very useful anymore. Simon Hibbs

There's no way to do that on the iPad, maybe on Android. They could make it free I suppose, after all it would be no use without KSP but might get people interested in flying the things they create. I wouldn't mind paying for it though. It's not for me to tell Squad or anyone else what they should or should not do for free. Simon

Full on KSP for the iPad would be fantastic, as long as it could avoid the stability issues with the console ports, but I'd like to suggest a more limited and perhaps intermediate project. Flying actual missions requires a variety of precise control inputs, I prefer FPS games on a computer because I find the imprecision of console controllers too frustrating. I'm concerned that on an iPad I'd find controlling KSP equally frustrating. I would greatly appreciate extending some of the KSP experience to on-the-go play. In particular I think an app implementing the VAB and Spaceplane Hanger would be a huge benefit. Since vehicle construction is not time critical, the control situation should be manageable. As long as input is precise enough, having to toggle input modes shouldn't be an issue. I'd love to be able to work out designs forlaunchers, Duna landers and rovers on the train and try them out when I get home, making maximum use of the limited time I do have to play at home. My concern is just how much of a market there would be for something like that. But personally I'd drop £10 on it in a heartbeat. Simon Hibbs

Agreed, stock KSP is very close to becoming the ideal version of itself. Simon Hibbs

It'll be difficult to fly without a Pilot (maybe add a probe core?), but you only need one Engineer. Pick your most experienced one, they give a multiplier on the production rate. Simon Hibbs

The moment when you realize the reason you can't dock to to that Clamp-O-Tron Sr on the space station, and keep bouncing off, is because the docking port is attached the wrong way round. Simon Hibbs

I haven't been to Minmus for ages as I got bored with it. It's just too easy - no real challenge. The last few career/science mode games I've played I ignored Minmus completely. Simon Hibbs

Is there actually a way to assemble things outside the VAB in stock? I suppose you could use the claw to attach things, or use a ring of landing legs as 'grabbers'. Simon Hibbs

Visual Enhancements.. That's it. I'm serious. I routinely install KER and Kerbal Alarm Clock, but I'm quite happy to leave those sorts of functions as mods. Maybe add them in if the alarm clock got a major feature trim, but that's really it. The core game is about done IMHO. At this point I'm much more interested in what Squad might come up with for an expansion pack that adds major new game play elements and objectives. But such a thing would have to be pretty epic - more than could be achieved by any mod. I'm not sure what that would look like. Simon Hibbs

KAC does look a bit cluttered, but I've not had any stability issues (I'm on 1.2) and it's done everything I wanted it to do very well. It's usually the second mod I install, right after KER. In fact those two are the only mods I really consider indispensable. Any others are just nice to have. Simon Hibbs

@toadicus I'll add my voice to those thanking you for this great mod. It made antennas useful and meaningful in the game, without being in any way tedious or feeling like make-work. KSP + AR was still first and foremost a fun game. In the end Squad went with a communications implementation that was a bit more complex, but I have no doubt that AR provided the benchmark and parameters for defining what a stock communications system implementation should try to do. I feel that the Snacks mod does the same for consumables and life support. I'm sure a stock life support system would be somewhat more involved than Snacks, but sometimes you need to strip an idea down to it's core essentials before building it back up to hit the sweet spot in terms of challenge and fun. You did exactly this with AR, a mod for which you can be truly proud. I completely agree it's played it's part and it's time to turn out the lights, but it will always have a place in KSP history for those of us that used and loved it. Simon Hibbs

Adding a 2-crew pod isn't going to change that. I agree I'd be interested in seeing actual game play reasons to send e.g. crewed landers to the moons of Jool, but we don't. Career is fun for a while, but long before getting to long distance missions I found myself flying my10th rescue mission, or doing a handful of science scans at nearby locations on the Mun or Minmus for the Nth time and quit to start a much more fun new Science game. I'm not bitter about it though. I've got more value for money out of KSP than pretty much anything else I've ever bought in my entire life. There are always the Reddit Challenges, or just doing things because you want to. But base KSP can't do everything and shouldn't try. The parts in the game need to be different enough to present real meaningful tradeoffs, yet enable a wide variety of options and that's it. I do worry a bit about other platforms without mod access, such as consoles. That was actually in my mind when posting my original comments. I just think there are more other things that are higher priority there than more command capsules. Simon Hibbs

You can physically fit Kerbals in, but frankly even the Mk1 challenges my suspension of disbelief a bit. Mercury was fine for upsy-downsie joyrides of a few orbits, but that's about it, while in KSP the Mk1 gets sent all over the system. No multi-crew spacecraft in real life has been anywhere near that small, for good reasons. There is a mod which provides a 1.25m 2 crew capsule and that's fine. It's a great project for a mod, but I don't see the need in stock. Simon Hibbs

Interesting thread. I have to come down against though. 1.25m is way too small to build a 2-man pod, and 2.5m is big enough that it doesn't make sens to put in less than 3. Yes it would be fun to play with 1.875, but it's just not necessary for stock. The 1.25m and 2.5m parts are different enough to present very distinct opportunities and challenges, but 1.875m would be neither one thing nor the other. The base game should stay stripped down and focused on simple, fun game play rather than try to scratch absolutely everybody's slightest itch. IMHO this is exactly the sort of edge case mods are there to fill. Simon Hibbs

I found MJ very useful in the early days, when I didn't have an intuitive understanding of how to do an efficient launch, performing rendezvous, reasonably efficient landing burns, docking and interplanetary transfers. Later I found I was performing more maneuvers manually. A new KSP version came out and MJ wasn't updated yet so I installed KER to get dV numbers and a month later realized I'd not even bothered to check if MJ had been updated yet. The same thing happened with various docking alignment tools. Having the automated tool or navigation indicator was very helpful early on, but once I was oriented and understood what I was seeing, I found I could do everything fine manually. So I have no problems with people using MJ. It's a fantastic tool and I learned a lot from it, but now I just don't need it. It does have a lot of informational displays and if you want to do very precise missions I'm sure those are useful, but nowadays I get by with KER, Kerbal Alarm Clock and some visual enhancement mods. I usually end up dropping in KIS/KAS at some point when I need them as well. So thanks MJ, you were there when I needed you. Simon Hibbs

Heres a pic of the lander and nuclear tug combo I described above. Simon Hibbs

My usual Mun science reaping system consists of three components. A science station in orbit at just over 50km altitude. A lander consisting of a Mk1 Lander can, a Materials bay underneath and two FL-T 200 fuel tanks one on each side. The tanks each have a 'Sparck' engine underneath and a couple of Micro legs. You can fill out the science stuff, battery and a solar panel mostly on top of the fuel tanks. Crucially the vehicle has two docking ports, one on the top of the cabin and the other under the materials bay. A variant of the RedBee92 design would also work fine if it had a port on the under side. The third component is a tug consisting of a probe core, docking port, FL-T800 fuel tank, RCS, nuclear engine, lights, battery and solar panels. This docks to the port underneath the lander and carries it to targets under inclined orbits and down to lower orbits for landing. Being nuke powered it has bags of dV. This way the lander only ever needs to drop down 8 to 10 km to the surface and the same back up to rendezvous with the tug. It also can be carried to reach targets at pretty much any location on the Mun. The science station is fitted out with fuel tankage to refuel the lander and a tank with just fuel (no oxidizer) for the nuke tug. A few times I've blown the fuel budget on the lander and not quite made it to orbit, and needed to quickly fly the tug to dock with the lander and push it up into orbit before it hit the deck. Fun! Simon Hibbs

Would it be possible to provide an extensible docking tunnel part? When placed near a docking port (or another docking tunnel) on another vessel you right-click the part, choose 'connect to port' and then click on the nearby docking port. This turns the docking tunnel part into exactly that - a tunnel connecting to the two vessels and docking them together. You'd only be able to do this if the angle and distance to the remote part were within certain parameters. Maybe about 20 degrees and 2 metres. Simon Hibbs