simonh

Indeed I like the 'snacks' approach to life support. The fact that it doesn't completely hose you if you run out mirrors the way that losing a communications connection doesn't completely paralyze probes. So it's a consideration, but doesn't change the game so much that it becomes predominantly about managing life support. I hate it. All it means is that once you get e.g. a space station to Duna, eventually you'll have to send a new space station to Duna again. It's make-work. HOWEVER Suppose Engineers could fix worn out parts? 2 year grace period before any chance of failure Failures take at least 1 year to happen, so you get 1 year's warning. Linear chance of failure over time, no age cascade effect. Parts pending failure get a red halo, and the vehicle gets an indicator in the Tracking Station This could be added as a check box in difficulty settings. You want it so you can still do most probe missions without a problem, but longer term missions really need to be multiply-redundant or manned so you can take an Engineer. Simon Hibbs

That's why for my recent games I pretend Minmus doesn't exist. I don't go to EH though. Simon Hibbs

Currently flying my first manned mission to Duna. It set of last night and I'll arrive at Duna tonight. I launched and assembled the vehicle in orbing then time accelerated 100+ days to the launch window. Annoyingly, my Munar science space station generated enough points to unlock nuclear engines during that time. Oh well, I’ll just assume nukes aren’t safe enough to use for manned missions yet, so my first nuke mission will be a probe to Moho. My previous game in 1.1 was Career, but it was getting seriously tedious repeating the same make-work rescue and multi-point science missions over and over. In 1.2 I went for a Science Mode game and it’s vastly more enjoyable. I’m making it a bit more challenging by ignoring Minmus. If I was doing it again I’d probably also reduce the Science Rewards rate to maybe 50%, otherwise science labs on time acceleration while you’re zipping through to launch windows make it too easy. I like the idea of science labs, but at 100% science rate they take away a bit too much of the challenge. Simon Hibbs

Please excuse me, the below is just my interpretation of your positions. Please correct me if I am wrong. I think this Green Baron/Sigma88 back-and forth is as much semantic disconnect as anything. Sigma88 just considers human influence over genetic change to be natural and therefore part of evolution. So Sigma88 all genetic change is evolutionary by definition. It seems to me Green Baron draws a distinction between genetic change influenced by an un-planned environmental factors different from genetic change caused by man-made factors and direct human editing of the genome. It's purely a matter of different uses of terminology. Sigma88, why is this key to understanding the Fermi Paradox? Simon Hibbs

The detected measurement persisting even after the experiment has been disabled. The thrust disappearing when the drive is powered by an internal battery and only appearing again when external power cables are added. Different experiments differing in measurements by orders of magnitude and no two experiments really matching up. It's not looking good for the EM Drive. Simon Hibbs

The tech tree and way science progresses is fine for me. Consider the science-only mode of the game without funds or reputation. In that mode I consider Science points to be an amalgam of all those factors. Bringing back scientific information causes an increase in the resources available to the space program which enables the development of more advanced parts. Clearly that disconnects somewhat with the separate treatment of funds and reputation in the career mode, but the whole system is necessarily so abstracted anyway it doesn't bother me. Simon Hibbs

I don't think my post can reasonably be construed as saying anything like that. I considered trying to re-iterate my point more clearly, but I don't think that's necessary or would achieve anything. Simon Hibbs

The presence of a toggle wouldn't change my answer. In fact I'm wiling to just assume that any such feature would come with a toggle. I don't think toggles significantly change the equation as to whether any significant feature should or shouldn't be added. In particular, if a feature is so controversial that it would only get a pass if it can be switched off, that right there is a strong indication that a large proportion of the player base would in fact switch it off. In which case that dev effort to create it was completely wasted from the perspective of many players and would have been better expended on features more players would use an appreciate. So you have a direct tradeoff. The more important a toggle is to giving it a pass, the less value the feature offers. Simon Hibbs

No, for two main reasons. One is it would close off many game play options that are currently available. Yes it would add new ones, but at the cost of existing viable options. Anything that restricts what is currently possible in the game has to be considered very carefully. Even a relatively minor thing like tweaking aerodynamic heating caused a huge ruckus, even though it would only involve very minor changes to existing vessels to make them work. Even that is a lot to ask. Life support would completely invalidate many vessels and missions that are perfectly viable today. That kind of collapse of the possible game play space is a huge deal. The second is that no two people are likely to ever agree exactly what a good game balance for life support should be. Should it all be abstracted into a single 'consumables' resource? Should food be distinct from recyclables such as air and water? Should we have food growing modules? How about components for recovering air or water from the environment? How close to realistic volume and mass requirements should it be? What would be realistic anyway? Lets say there are even only 5 different ways this could be balanced, each one with a similar number of people who support it. Whichever balance option Squad were to select, 4/5 of the players would disagree with it, to varying degrees. I suspect life support is far more susceptible to this than most game balance issues because it's so complex. This is a perfect example of an area where mods are the right way to fill the gap. There's plenty of scope for different mods to take different approaches and provide different gameplay experiences. Even if life support was added to the game, I suspect there would still be many mods tweaking or replacing it. Simon Hibbs

I think it's because most attached parts overlap with each other to some extent. Generally we don't notice or choose not to and only really become conscious of it when landing legs or antennae deploy through fuel tanks and such, but it's actually happening all the time. Simon Hibbs

Regarding space fever in the UK, if you get the chance check out the Royal Institute Lectures this year, broadcast by the BBC. Try iPlayer. The title is 'How to survive in space', there are three episodes and they are immense fun. They're aimed at kids, but are well worth watching even if you don't have my advantage of having 11 and 12 years old kids to watch it with you. Simon Hibbs

Thanks handy, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. My main request still stands though. When EVAâ€â€ing a Kerbal my main concern is usually their specialism and we EVA them from the thumbnails. Simon Hibbs

I have launched a 3-Kerbal capsule into orbit and am nearing a satellite that needs repairs. I need to EVA my Engineer to do the work, but wait, which one is the Engineer? Should I exit to the space centre, go to the astronaut complex, identify the engineers, go back to the tracking station, take control of the flight again and EVA my Engineer? No, I just check which one has the 'Engineer' badge displayed on their IVA thumbnail. Why badges? So much nicer than an 'Engineer' or 'Pilot' subtitle, and the badges could be used elsewhere, such as in the Astronaut Complex not to replace the text label but to supplement it. Secondary suggestion - I have a space station with a capsule docked. How can I tell which Kerbal is in which module? With KAS instaleld it's not a problem because the right-click menu lists them along with access to their inventory, but in stock KSP this is an annoying problem. The context menu for a module really should indicate which Kerbals are inside it. Simon Hibbs

Absolutely. Interstellar was fun for the first few dozen episodes, but the mega-tech made it to much of a cakewalk. Interesting to a point, but I've no interest in playing KSP that way. Reusable Space Program was great though. Real challenge and ingenuity, and so prescient with SpaceX's current efforts to achieve the same in real life. It inspired me to push for efficiency and economy in my designs long before career mode made that an actual advantage. Simon Hibbs

What a great idea for a mod! IMHO this is exactly how the antennas should work in the stock game. I've looked at remote tech and it just looks like way too much busywork to be interesting, but this hits the challenge versus simplicity ratio right at the point of maximum fun. Many thanks.

Is there a link where I can get the 0.19 version of docking cam? There are still quite a few mods I depend on that aren't updated so my main game is still on 0.19. Simon Hibbs

How dare people get upset for being called cheats, how totally unreasonable of them! Seriously, if you think the height of maturity is trashing other people and feeling all superior about it you've still got a few lessons about growing up to learn. My girls are aged 8 and 9. Honestly if they didn't use mechjeb I doubt they'd still be playing it, but now they know all about perhaps is, apoapsis, prograde, retrograde and circularising orbits. My eldest has even manually landed on the Mun, but used mechjeb to get there. Feel free to look down your nose at us as much as you like. Simon Hibbs

Small changes early in the journey are magnified enormously at the destination. Either you need to hit the nail bang on the head from the start, **Cough** Mechjeb **Cough**, or you'll need to wait until you're closer and make an easier, but more expensive corrective burn then. Oh, and use Nuclear rockets. Simon Hibbs

About 2 minutes on my late 2012 Mac Mini with Fusion Drive. I've installed about half a dozen mods. KSPX, Quantum Struts, Kethane, ISA Mapsat, Subassembly Loader and Mechjeb 2 off the top of my head. The fusion drive is fantastic. Flash drive speeds the vast majority of the time, with over 1GB capacity. On a Windows box a Flash cache should do the same job, or a flash drive if you don't need as much capacity. Simon Hibbs

Even the most aggressive SSTO designs carry only small payloads into low orbits. If you want to get more than a dozen tons up higher than a couple of hundred km you need a multi-stage system. For my money, the Spacex plan to use a multi-stage design but recover every stage is the most practical option for a reusable system. Simon Hibbs

Last time I checked, the Russians and Chinese were human. Simon Hibbs

Vry true. In fact if it hadn't been for the fact their arch rival Russia had beaten the USA to launching a satellite AND putting a man in space, it's unlikely the USA would have even gone to the moon in the first place. I don't know about turning any sights on Mars. Kennedy set a definite goal of going to the moon and marshalled the political will for a concrete, funded programme for achieving it. No such programme has ever been put in place for a Mars mission. Bigelow has big plans, and their mission does appear to be viable but when it comes right down to it, it's just a flyby. Even if it happens, we're not actually all that much closer to a manned landing, which would be several orders of magnitude more expensive and technically challenging. Simon Hibbs

We've barely sent anything at all to the Moon since 1969, let alone people. If there really was any good reason to go there at all, we'd have rovers and lunar satellites all over it. The trouble is, apart from potentially He3, which may or may not every be worth the bother, there's just nothing there we don't already have in abundance here. The same goes for Mars, except scratch the He3. Personally I think the asteroids are much more interesting in terms of actual reasons to investigate them. They're a potential threat to us, and may have useful resources which maybe, just maybe might be worth extracting. In terms of timeline, it's going to be a good long while before people go back to the Moon. China might do it for national prestige reasons. Their current pace of manned space flight is extremely leisurely though. They really don't seem to be in any hurry, so I'd guess they might go for it in another 20 or 30 years. It's more likely to happen if they think they need the propaganda value, e.g. if they have any major disasters or upheavals. I think it's possible we might have a manned mission to mars by the end of the century, but I think it's highly unlikely. Put it this way, no human has been beyond LEO for about 40 years. We have no more good reasons for them to do so now than at any time during that period, and practically speaking our technology is only very slightly better than back then as well. Simon Hibbs

I'm wondering why they bother accounting for fuel and oxidizer separately. I know it's realistic, but in practice what difference does it make? Why not just list how much 'propellant' the tank contains, then just have different propellants for chemical, nuclear and ion engines. Simon Hibbs

Apart from both using a gas-generator cycle, I don't think they are related. Even just from a scale point of view an F-1 was about 9 tonnes, while a Merlin is 630 Kg. IIRC some of the basic design ideas were originally taken from a Russian engine, but I know the turbopump is an entirely original design. They've always been trying some pretty unusual design variations. For example one early version used an ablatively cooled composite nozzle! Anyway the design has been iterated on so much any resemblance to previous designs is pretty academic at this stage. Simon Hibbs