Crush

I found career mode with cost too easy for me as a KSP veteran. Even when I played iron-man (no loading, no reverting flights) I never even got close to not having enough cash. So I decided to make it a bit more challenging by writing a little program which edits all the part.cfg files and increases (or decreases) all part costs by a given factor. It comments out the old value and uses that value when run again, so the change is reversible. The program works great for me, but in its current state it isn't usable for anyone else. The program is command-line based, the path to the KSP directory is hardcoded to my install directory and the cost factor is also hardcoded. To make it usable for someone else I would have to build a proper GUI for it, which would be much more work than writing the functionality itself. Does such a tool already exist? Is there interest in such a tool? Is there anyone else who is currently making one? When the answers are no, yes and no, I might make it end-user ready and offer it for download.

Actually, there were real-life unmanned probes which returned surface samples from the moon and there are plans to do the same thing from Mars.

We need to differentiate here between different launchpads at the same space center and different space centers at different locations Regarding multiple space centers: The current location exactly on the equator is already quite ideal for most kinds of missions. There are few possible mission which would benefit from a launch location on a higher inclination. From the point of view of a sandbox-player, choosing a different location might be a welcome challenge because it adds more complexity to the game. But from the point of view of a career-player, there would be little reason to settle anywhere else, unless less-ideal locations would be somehow cheaper or provide other benefits. Different regions of Kerbin could have different multipliers for part cost (due to infrastructure and logistics), building fixcost (due to weather) or might be unavailable at first and need to be unlocked during the career (for story-reasons). Your space program might start out as a hobby project in Wernher von Kermans backyard, then become supported by the local government, then different nations offer you to work for them and want you to choose between them and finally you become an international program and can build space centers anywhere. Regarding space center(s) with multiple launchpads: KSP is supposed to become a full-fledged tycoon-style space program simulator one day, where budget-management will play a role and maintaining and upgrading the space center will be part of the game. That could mean that the player can build new launchpads with different properties. Smaller launchpads would be cheaper to build and maintain than larger ones, but would put a limit on dimensions and mass of the rockets you can launch from them. Support facilities near the launchpad might be required to be able to use certain parts. But as long as launches can be done in zero-time, there would be no reason to have more than one launchpad. Just having a single one and upgrading it as soon as the player has the funds to spare would be sufficient. It would get more interesting when launches would require a preparation-time of several days. Then it would suddenly get interesting to have multiple launchpads so multiple launches can be prepared and performed in parallel. For a sandbox-game where prep-time and budget are no constraint, the player could just spawn one of the largest and best-equipped launchpads possible. There is little reason to settle for anything less. So launchpad-management would add little to sandbox-mode.

I would suggest you to direct your pressure to fix this issue at Unity. Getting them to fix their joystick handling would benefit a lot more games than just KSP. It would also be much more convenient for the KSP players when they would have properly configured joysticks out-of-the-box and wouldn't have to use an ingame calibration tool. Unfortunately good joystick support has fallen out of the focus of most PC game engines, because the joystick as an input device for PC games moved more and more into a niche area over the past 20 years.

I suggest snowmen ☃! No, seriously. I think semi-transparent ice crystals could work. Or ice spikes like they are suspected to exist on Europa.

Download at 110% - they are really giving everything this time.

Download at 90%

Download at 40% - .23 I'm comming!

There it is! Download starting!

Lesson learned for the development team: Communicate less. The less the players know about upcomming features, the less they have to whine about when their expectations aren't fulfilled.

You can hardly cause an ablation cascade in KSP. The game doesn't calculate collisions between objects away from the player, so debris will only start to split into more debris when the collision events happen near the object the player is focusing on. Otherwise they just pass through each other. And even when the game would calculate off-screen collisions normally, the ablation cascade would fix itself rather quickly. The reason is that parts which collide with high speed just explode and disappear instead of breaking up into many small pieces. Also, the maximum number of fragments a vessel can break into is limited because parts can't break into two and just disappear in an explosion when the collision is fast enough. That's a lot less dangerous than in reality where a vessel can break into thousands of centimeter to milimeter-sized fragments which would then take millenia until they grind each other into rather harmless dust-rings.

I think he is referring to Blender, the 3d animation software which has absolutely nothing to do with KSP. It's free (open source), so you could download it and also make movies like that... when you have a few hundred hours of spare-time to learn how to use it properly.

A Niven Ring, a rigid, thin ring around a planet or sun, like the Ringworld from he novels of Larry Niven or the Halo from the game of the same name, wouldn't be stable either, even when you asume that it is constructed strong enough to withstand any shear forces. The smallest disturbance of its center of mass would cause it to collide with the body in the center. See Why Niven Rings are unstable for details.

While it is possible to perform an EVA landing on Gilly and get back to the ship in orbit, that's nothing a beginner should attempt. It requires a lot of experience with orbital rendevouz to maneuver a Kerbal to a capsule in orbit. You can't use maneuver nodes on EVA and can't use the jetpack while in map view, so you will have to orientate yourself by surface, stars and sun and use your own judgement to estimate when to thrust how long into which direction. Still, it's one of the most interesting challenges in KSP.

The larger you build, the more problems do you get with craft stability and simulation performance. But when you found a heavy lifter design which works, there is not much reason to not use it for smaller payloads even when it is total overkill. I hope that the introduction of a limited budget for career mode will one day encourage more economic designs.