KSK

[quote name='Hevak']Yes it is getting blow out of proportion. It's being done so, and there is really no other way to put this, because many are becoming petulant over something that is quite small in the grand scheme of the world. the fact that people are blowing this so out of proportion is a good validation of the devs decision. Being upset is one thing but the level that it's being taken in this thread is another. The he devs have explained a couple times why it is going away. First it was against the rules to role play for awhile now. And role play can be a huge nightmare for forums when you already have arguments that pop on them. Now add someone saying oh I was just acting like a complete donkey to them because i was just playing a role. I didn't break the rules yada yada. It makes moderation a tougher thing in all cases, and they said everyone may not have seen it but they regularly had to mod that section. And as evidence here and in the rb forum people are taking it a little to serious and a little to the extreme, causing several posts to moderated here as well. i find it funny that many of the save the rb people are claiming it's wrong what squad are doing, and making snide remarks in the process. Yet the real thing they need to realize is they were in the wrong first as there was no rp allowed, yet they still did and continuously broke the rules and cause moderation issues. Some are even demanding that they be allowed to have a place to rp no matter what, or else it will spill into other threads. So yeah make some thinly veiled threats to keep breaking the rules no matter what, that certainly helps your cause doesn't? You can still make and sharecraft, even cooperatively. It has been stated many times now. There just won't be a rb thread, but you can use the exchange thread. Just don't roleplay it like a real company in the sense of acting out parts it's not hard to understand is it? you were graciously given some time to backup all your work by the devs, in fact they could have easily just erased the whole thread if they wanted. There is nothing that says they have to let you backup or move your work over, sans rp of course, to the exchange. But they let you. So maybe count that as a blessing in a difficult situation. they have since said that rb will be a hidden archive after the change to allow people to link to it and work on changing things over after the change as well. As as for the company part, you can still brand your stuff with a name if you like. It's perfectly ok, for example look at Roverdudes stuff for USI, or Taraniselu for TAC even TriggerAU for trigger tech I think it is? And several others that brand all their work. The difference you ask? Well when you go into their thread they talk and act like a regular person, they don't roleplay a ceo or a company at all. They don't play or act out bits ever. There is a big difference and keeps things nicer. now being upset is generally fine, as is voicing your opinion and pushing for change. But honestly I hope one day many of you realize that your actions in this thread alone have probably done more to validate this decision by the devs. The amount of asinine, insolent posts, and plain lack of respect shown toward squad and the mods trying to get change kind of amazes me. You may be unhappy and I do understand it to some extent, but it was no need to act the way many have, and continue to do so here, towards the mods or anyone really. i would be upset if some of my contributions I have made to a couple threads went away too,I invested time in it and it's nice to have the history yes. But My life would continue as normal, if a persons life won't because of that, then they really need look into some help as there are issues there. But things end, this game or the whole world could end tomorrow. Squad is a small company and things can happen much easier and quicker to a small company, good or bad. Squad does not have to provide us with a forum. They don't have to allow us to create, use, or share mods or crafts at all. But they do and they have established rules and are working to enforce them for what I see are perfectly valid reasons. and really the main point to really think about now is that if you all had just followed the rules and avoided the role playing altogether you probably wouldn't be in this mess. And if you'd like to continue making and sharing craft which I'm sure many people including me to a small extent, would like, just put aside the rp aspect and things will be fine. but honestly most of you have gotten so rediculous in your responses to this, that like I said you have more than anything done so much to validate the devs/mods decision.[/QUOTE] I'm sorry but 'follow the rules and everything will be OK', without any further justification, is rarely a good argument. Rules are not immutable; if enough people can break them without causing harm to themselves or others, then perhaps its time to review and maybe change them to something more manageable. Blindly following The Rules just because they're The Rules is just as bad as ignoring The Rules just because they're The Rules. Your circular argument of an unpopular decision being justified because it was unpopular doesn't hold much merit either. Finally, judging from what I've read on this thread, there was a wide spectrum of posts on the RB forum, ranging from 'clearly within the rules' through 'harmlessly skirting the edges of the rules', to 'clearly breaking the rules to the detriment of others.' Punishing everyone on that spectrum, for the sake of the people on one end of it, is unfair. Regardless of anyone's personal feelings about the RB forum, this announcement was a poor piece of change management. Squad have a forum (for better or for worse) where players metaphorically take to the streets in defense of the Round8. A forum where there are long discussions about fragmenting vs clamshell fairings. I do wonder how they imagined those players might react to having an entire section of the forums deleted. The decision to close the RB thread, as originally presented, looked arbitrary. I hear a lot on this thread about how the role-playing got out of hand in the past. Fine - then the correct decision would have been to close down RB (with a warning) at that time, not some indeterminate time later. Also, whether or not the decision was objectively justified, presenting it as 'this is how its going to be - deal with it' was not a good way of getting people to agree with Squad's position, especially when those people had relatively little time to 'deal with it'. One arbitrary looking decision also, understandably, prompts concerns about the possibility of other arbitrary decisions happening later on. I accept that everything looks obvious in hindsight but I'm also willing to bet that if Squad had simply chosen to leave RB up as a read-only section of the new forums, then this thread would have been an awful lot shorter. It would have been clear that they were respecting (or at least tolerating) existing content, whilst still having a place for new, similar content shorn of any elements that had been found to cause problems in the past.

Good question. Hope 3 and 4 were solar powered - you can see it in their self-test sequence - and I was kind of assuming that Hope 1 and 2 were solar powered as well without a lot of thought as to how feasible that would be. Technically it's doable - the 2011 [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)"]Juno[/URL] probe was solar powered, although that's rather later tech than I've had the kerbals using up to now. On the other hand, they're generally more advanced with renewable energy sources relative to human development in the 60s -70s (see the default use of electric vehicles unless they're in a particularly remote location or have a need for a particularly rugged vehicle), so solar powered Jool probes might still fit. Something to think about for sure - thanks! Without giving too much away, the question of nuclear powered spacecraft is definitely going to arise in Part 4, so it would be relatively easy to slip in a minor retconn to RTG powered probes at that point. What do folks think? Solar or RTG for Hopes 1 and 2?

Hi Josh, Hope you're feeling better and I'm glad you found something to distract you in the Fan Works! As for the rest of your (very) kind words - I don't know what to say. Being mentioned alongside one of my favourite books and an author that I respect greatly (his wrapping up of the Wheel of Time was excellent in my opinion)... yeah, 'thank you' seems a bit of a lame reply after that. All I can say is that I'll try my best to keep it up and I hope you'll like the way the story pans out. - KSK. [COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR] On a related note, I'm going to be taking some downtime from writing these next few days to make myself a backup of this thread. Just in case anything goes awry with the forum migration at the end of the week. It's a been a long time since I posted the original [i]First Flight[/i] short story back in 2013 and it's no exaggeration (the occasionally glacial update pace notwithstanding :) ), to say that this thread has been a big part of my life since then. There are an awful lot of good memories tucked away in these 78 pages of comments and I would be sincerely upset to lose them. Thank you all. KSK.

[quote name='juanml82']Doesn't South Korea have only a few last names? It may just be a cultural thing of Kerbal civilization. Or "Kerman" is their tribe/country/something, and only Kerbals of the Kerman group are brave (or stupid :P) enough to go into space[/QUOTE] That's my headcanon at any rate. Kerman is more like a caste name (not quite but close enough) than a surname.

[quote name='ezequielandrush']I am glad of the change. I understand those ones that fells that SQUAD is taking something away from them. But it's not OUR forum, we are just part of it. I am a sysadmin and I support the idea of migrating. I understand the difficulties of having old software and keep it running smoothly. The security issues are really a concern. Sometimes it's a headache just keep things working in a world where the only constant is change. Everything needs to change and everything will change eventually. So embrace it. Fight it just make the thing worse. Go ahead squad. In a matter of months nobody will miss the old forum, we just will be remembering it in a nostalgic way. Saludos Zeke PS: Maybe keep all the desingns and ideas of Rocketbuilder in a separate read-only thread is not a bad idea. I just don't know if it can be done without a large amount of effort.[/QUOTE] I understand what you're saying about the technical issues but I must disagree with your second sentence. We are not simply part of the forum - without us there wouldn't [I]be[/I] a forum, merely a collection of placeholder entries on Squad's website.

I'll be blunt - I don't like the new look but then again I never did like this modern 'white space and flat tiles' aesthetic. Call me a crusty old gamer if you like. Hopefully the new forum software will have a decent search function, which would be one very good reason for migrating in my opinion, despite the other problems already noted on this thread. Regarding Rocket Builders. I never used it so can't really comment either way, but would it really be so hard to add it as an archived forum? It does seem very harsh to just delete it. And on a final, personal, note, I do not like the decision to merge Live from Mission Control into Fanworks and respectfully request that this decision be reversed. Having a discrete sub forum for video gives the other fan works room to be recognised - I fear that merging the forums will mean that those other works simply become lost under a pile of video threads.

Hey folks. Meve12 has pretty much nailed it - the Hope probes are roughly Viking level tech. Viking took a long time to build (planning started in the late 60's well before Apollo really got into its stride) and a lot of the development problems were computer related. So in that context, I figured Hope wasn't too far fetched given that the kerbals were starting with much better computer tech and, as Commander Zoom pointed out, have a rather pressing need for their interplanetary probes. Hence funding and other resources were not an issue but even then, the Probodyne guys were all running on fumes by the end. Even then, Hope had been in the works for a while. The lander hardware was being tested well before the Pioneer 2 flight and in fact the Pioneer 2 crew delivered the heat shields for the first Hope probes on their way through to Barkton for their training. To answer Macdjord's point - basically, the kerbals went straight to Viking without going through Mariner first. They did have Minmus as a practice run for deep space probes but even so, yeah going straight for a lander was ambitious. Again, this was largely down to urgent need - a flyby mission wasn't really going to help them answer the key questions about Duna in time, so it didn't happen. As for the first time success - well Viking was pretty damn impressive on that score too. NASA had a bit of experience with retrorocket landings with the Surveyer probes but Viking was a huge leap forward from there. It's worth noting that the Hope probes are general purpose, one size sort of fits all, interplanetary probes. They're a modular design, intended to be produced in bulk and launched until they work. As such they're fairly over-engineered for a Duna mission but getting them to Laythe (for example) is going to require some creativity... In fact with the way the launch windows worked out, Hopes 1 and 2 were dispatched to Laythe (and are still in transit as of the last chapter) well before Hopes 3 and 4 set off for Duna.

I don't see myself using this personally - with the size of Mun ships that I normally use, I really don't need much fuel to get them home using Cantab's approach. With that said, it does sound like a very cool bit of navigation!

[quote name='WedgeAntilles'][B] LOL![/B] Literally. I genuinely busted a rib reading that. You just screwed up big time. "WedgeAntilles" was not stupid enough to dabble into your area of expertise. [SIZE=3][B]Wikipedia was.[/B][/SIZE] If you're going to tell me you know better than Wikipedia? Forget it. That's the ultimate peer-reviewed journal, and they trump you, every time. I read the history myself. Andrew Wiles pwn3d Fermat's Last Theorem. In secret. [B]ONE MAN.[/B][/quote] Looks like you broke a perfectly good rib for nothing then. Firstly, I find your characterisation of Wikipedia to be distinctly optimistic. It's a wonderful tool, it's a marvelous way of getting an overview of almost any conceivable topic and for topics (such as Fermat's last theorem) which aren't particularly controversial, it's probably a very good reference source. I would never use it as a sole reference and for anything remotely controversial, I would take its articles with the requisite grain of salt. The 'ultimate peer reviewed journal' it is not. Secondly, I too read the Wikipedia history of Wiles' proof and I'm seeing exactly what ZetaX said. I draw your attention to the opening line of the Wikipedia article: Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a proof of the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves released by Andrew Wiles, which, [B]together with Ribet's theorem[/B], provides a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem. (emphasis added) Wiles fully deserves all the credit he got but he was also building on the work of many other mathematicians. He certainly didn't 'pwn Fermat's last theorem in secret.' Anyway - back to climate change wrangling.

[quote name='Madrias']Well, by the sound of it, we have metal feet on Duna. This just got even more exciting[/QUOTE] Yup! First kerbal-made object on another planet. At some point that fact will dawn on the Probodyne team but for now they're a bit occupied with the science. :) [COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR] [quote name='KerbMav']It always works ... :wink: Thanks![/QUOTE] :D You're welcome! I have a family gathering this weekend (my little nephew is being christened) so I probably won't have a lot of time for writing, but I'm hoping to get the next chapter out by next weekend.

A slightly sci-fi solution but your cyborg? Is there any way those nanobots he/she is carrying can be duplicated? More importantly can they be retrieved after their disinfection mission?

[quote name='Stargate525']Neither of which have happened yet, Africa's actually getting GREENER, and it's rained in the Atacama for the first time in reliable recorded history. And you are aware of the MASSIVE subsidies that are making renewables at all viable, right?[/QUOTE] If I make MY points in CAPITALS too, will people listen to ME? Anyhow - I presume you're also aware of the massive subsidies handed out to the fossil fuels industry too? If not, have a look at [URL="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-19"]this[/URL] article in The Economist - which I'll hope you agree is hardly a bastion of left-leaning environmentalism. TL: DR "Fossil fuels are reaping support of $550 billion annually, according the International Energy Agency (IEA), an organisation that represents oil- and gas-consuming countries, more than four times those given for renewable energy."

For me, the filler (aka 'the good stuff') is the hard part that takes all the time. I work roughly the same way that CalculusWarrior does and yeah - a chapter outline, no matter how detailed, is not a chapter. Or not one that I think anyone would want to read. :)

[quote name='steuben']As long as they need to be. I don't force chapter breaks, they usually find me. Same with climaxes, the moment I had finished the chapter I knew I had hit the Shakespearean climax, and the same number of words later the story ended. Though if the chapter is running very short and the next one looks like it will as well, I'll weld the two together, buff down the seam, and give it a good coat of paint. (Disney needed to do that with "Frozen", you can still feel the weld marks. Same with "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman.) If it is running just a bit short it is sometime possible to stretch them a bit. That's a bit easier in the visual formats, like Ralph Bakshi said, "If episode was short we just kept webhead swinging a bit longer to pad it out."[/QUOTE] My chapters are normally somewhere between 3500 to 5000 words, sometimes a bit longer if they need to be. I'll normally include sections from different points of view in the same chapter to help with the word count (I like to post a decent chunk of text at a time) but I won't force it. A couple of recent chapters of [i]First Flight[/i] were originally intended to be stuck together but it would have ended up being so lopsided that I decided to post it as two separate pieces.

Game on! Good kerbals - we got ourselves a race again. And for somebody who 'detests writing dialogue' you do a great a job of it!

Electric propellers. As mentioned elsewhere, I don't care too much for boats and planes myself but now that buoyancy is a thing, lets have a couple of ship parts to go with it, rather than needing jet or rocket powered submarines. :) More capsules. A two man capsule to fill the current gap between the Mk1 and Mk1-2 capsules and open up more options for early crews. Plus a 3.75m, 7+ crew capsule for later in the game. At the moment a spaceplane is practically mandatory for getting large numbers of kerbals to and from orbit and more transportation options would be nice for those of us that don't really do planes. More moving parts and more base parts for reasons mentioned earlier in this thread.

Thanks Madrias! Next chapter is up. If you cut us... "So which treaty is current?" The voice betrayed the faintest edge of impatience. "The latter of the two, Mr President." This voice held more than a faint edge of frustration. "Although I'd very much like to find which committee drafted it."And stuff their collected heads into a gronnek warren. "Frankly sir, it's a mess. Parts of it refer back to the older treaty and the rest is filled with the kind of ornately obfuscatory wordsmithery that I would fail a student for using, let alone anyone experienced enough to be let loose on an internationally binding accord." "A genuine Wakiran classic then," somebody murmured. "Quite. And they are taking full advantage of it." "Their radar post. Surely that is prohibited under either treaty?" "Their "maritime traffic monitoring station" is not. Their "purely precautionary and defensive installation" doesn't appear to be either. Naturally we strongly disagree with both descriptions." "They're running patrols for Kerm's sake!" "Training exercises only, dear fellow. As you must understand, it behooves them to maintain complete and current charts of such a potentially hazardous stretch of water." The President sighed. "How long can they keep up this... stalling?" "Long enough, Mr President. Their Kerm is young - too young to have Knitted. Given another month however..." "And we are certain it can be moved?" "As certain as our botanists can be, sir but the longer we leave it, the higher the risk of permanent damage." Another voice spoke up. "And we're certain that we need the blighted archipelago?" "Regrettably, yes. The recent heatwave has pushed both Spierka and Forseti to the brink of Kerm saturation. With some sacrifices we can absorb the latest burst of Seeds but after that we have no choice but to look further afield. The archipelago is a stop-gap at best but a necessary one." "And the cold storage option?" someone said quietly. The President's voice chopped through the sudden buzz of conversation. "No. Our Kerm have the same rights to life as any other. We do not bury them alive." "In which case, Mr President, it behooves us to move quickly before we endanger their Kerm as well." "Agreed. We will continue to seek a diplomatic solution but in the absence of any tangible progress at the next negotiation round... I trust I make myself clear?" "Quite clear, Mr President." ----------- Duna. The Red Planet. A wandering star that had drawn kerbal eyes skyward ever since they had thought to look beyond their Kerm; their efforts to predict and then understand it’s path across the sky the underpinning behind some of their greatest scientific achievements. The historical record was replete with astronomical works, the very earliest ones dating back to the First Age of Prosperity and only recognisable by their diagrams and charts. The accompanying texts tended to be written in obscure notations and more often than not were simply lost. Even then, scientific historians pointed out, they showed a comparatively sophisticated understanding, suggesting that still earlier records were destroyed in the turmoil of the Age of Madness. Through the earliest telescopes, Duna appeared as a blurred reddish-orange disc which exhibited only limited phases, unlike the Mün. As their instruments improved, kerbal astronomers observed dark and light regions of Duna's surface. They watched them change over time and deduced the length of Duna's day, which was found to be a little longer than Kerbin's. The white regions at Duna's poles were also seen to change, although over the course of a season rather than a day. Popularly supposed to be made of ice, the Duna polar caps were the cause of much, largely unverified, speculation on Dunan weather and whether water might be found elsewhere on the surface. The pressing navigational needs of the Age of Sail drove new waves of enquiry into astronomy and turned telescope manufacture from a pastime and curiosity into an industry. Progress was rapid and was matched by an equally rapid growth in the number and quality of astronomical observations. Duna's position in the sky was pinpointed with unparalleled precision, steadily more detailed maps were made of its surface and, like Kerbin, it was found to have a mun, which was named Ike. As the Age of Sail waxed into the Second Age of Prosperity, the burgeoning sciences of photometry, and then spectroscopy, provided kerbal astronomers with their first temperature measurements of Duna's surface and skies and their first glimpses into the makeup of those skies. Ever more sophisticated observational and mathematical techniques placed an upper limit on the thickness of Duna's atmosphere, established that it contained significant quantities of carbon dioxide and suggested that on the whole, Duna was a smooth world, free of large surface irregularities. Further progress would have to wait for an extraordinary leap into the unknown and the pioneering achievements of three teams of kerbals. And like the Age of Sail before it, the astronomical accomplishments of the new Age would be driven as much by dire need as by scientific curiosity. ------------ Lodan studied the printout intently. “These are confirmed?" Jernie nodded. “Averaged radio occultation data from the Hope 3 and Hope 4 orbiters over the last twelve orbits. We'll continue to refine them of course but I wouldn't expect any significant changes." “Not as thick as we were hoping for from the scattering studies," said Dunney soberly, “Fifteen percent atmospheric pressure was optimistic I'll grant you but even ten to eleven percent would make things much more convenient. Six percent is going to require pressure suits." “Kerbinside observations are always going to be limited," said Jernie. She rubbed her eyes. “And as best we can tell, we should just edge over the Geofler limit on the lower plains." Lodan made a note on his pad. “I'll speak to Erlin at the Berelgan," he said. “I doubt that six percent is survivable for Kerm but I'm certainly no expert. Building Kerm sized shelters is going to present some logistical challenges though." Dunney snorted. “A nice problem to have," he said. “Whilst I confess to having no good idea how fast Kerm grow, if we even get to the point where we need to worry about building them a bigger greenhouse, I'd say we were doing well." “Indeed," said Lodan. “Which reminds me - do the spectroscopy team have any more information for us?" “They're still trying to quantify the nitrogen content," replied Jernie. She shrugged. “Nitrogen is always a pain to work with. We're seeing carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon mainly. Traces of water and oxygen but nothing you could breathe. The mass spec data from the landers will give us a better picture." Dunney bent down and retrieved a long tube from under the table. “Speaking of which." He carefully extracted a roll of glossy paper. “A hand if you would, please, Jernie." Jernie jumped to her feet and helped Dunney unroll the paper and pin it to the wall. Lodan stared at the black and white picture, noting the pair of thin, red ellipses drawn over it. Dunney picked up a pointer, unfolded it, and to Lodan's inward amusement, tucked a thumb into his belt and began to lecture them. “This is the initial, low-resolution composite map of Duna, generated from the wide angle cameras aboard the Hope 3 and Hope 4 orbiters - you'll notice that it has a slightly motttled appearance for that reason. Cylindrical projection of course, so the polar regions are grossly distorted, but we're not immediately interested in them in any case." Dunney cleared his throat. “The orbiters are also equipped with high-resolution cameras and the survey team will be assembling an improved map over the next few weeks, which they'll use to select the final landing sites. However, based on the images obtained to date, we have tentatively identified two possibilities that may be of interest." The pointer jabbed at one of the red ellipses. “The first site - here - shows features akin to a large river delta here on Kerbin. This will need to be confirmed on the high-resolution images and even if verified, is unlikely to be due to currently flowing surface water. In fact, we believe the features are more likely to be created by surface erosion due to fluidised particulates." Dunney gave them a lopsided grin. “Of course, we cannot entirely rule out an alternative hypothesis which is that we're looking at an ancient watercourse, ideally with sub-surface ice deposits still present. We propose this landing site as a means to test that hypothesis but more prosaically because it's a large flat region of Duna that ought to be comparatively straightforward to land on." He pointed at the second ellipse. “Giving the flight planners a bit of practice before asking them to put a lander down at Site 2." Lodan leaned forward. "Presumably without hitting those mountains," he said. “Well, those hills anyway." Dunney nodded. “They're higher than they look but yes, that's the idea. We're thinking that the hills would provide shelter from the prevailing winds and ideally we'll find a nice cliff face somewhere that the colonists can burrow into. Better yet would be another stream bed nearby but I rather imagine that would be setting our hopes too high." Lodan drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Agreed," he said at last. “Unless the high resolution studies find somewhere better, Site 1 is our main objective If we do manage to set down there on the first attempt, then we try for Site 2 as well." Dunney folded up his pointer. “Thank you, Director." -------------- Silently, Hope 3 split into two, its flattened, discoidal base drifting slowly away from its spindly, angular upper body. Tiny rockets fired around the rim of the base section, nudging it onto an intercept course with the snow-capped, dusty orange sphere waiting far below. The body section pivoted to follow, onboard cameras tracking the disc as it fell, surrogate eyes of silicon and glass for the anxious kerbals watching from so many millions of kilometres away. The rockets fired again, making fine adjustments to the disc's trajectory and orientation. Light minutes away from Kerbin, the final moments of its long voyage would be over before its controllers could react, let alone respond. Trails of glowing gas streamed away from the descending spacecraft, its blunt, saucer shaped front end glowing red, then yellow, then white hot, as it tore through the thin Dunan air. Instruments buried within its shell sensed the steadily building forces. By itself the resultant information was a meaningless stream of electronic pulses. Combined with other bits of data hard-wired into the spacecraft's computer memory, it provided the vital measuring rule against which its descent could be gauged. Two strings of numbers were compared many hundreds of times per second and for a fleeting moment they matched. A threshold was crossed, triggering new sets of instructions. Explosive bolts fired, blasting the upper aeroshell section away from the plummeting craft. Seconds later parachutes deployed, hauling it free from the still glowing heatshield, which tumbled away out of sight. Two more numbers slid into alignment. Four articulated metal legs unfolded from the spacecraft body. Rupturing gas cartridges slammed knife blades through restraining tethers and cut the parachutes free. Clusters of rocket engines fired, bleeding off excess speed whilst invisible beams of radio waves probed the surface below. The spacecraft dipped to one side, floated sideways and then steadied. A final pair of numbers crossed their preprogrammed thresholds. The rocket engines shut down, the exhaust from each engine barely enough to stir the dust from the waiting planet’s surface. Four legs kissed the ground; honeycomb padded feet crumpled under the load and brought the spacecraft to a standstill. Antennas unfolded and tilted skywards, automatically seeking a pair of invisible stars through the dusty Dunan sky, one high and swift-moving, the other low and fixed, a bright blue speck hidden by Kerbol's dim disc. ----------- “Picking up a carrier signal. Something made it down in one piece anyway. Waiting for post-landing self test." Muted applause rippled through the crowded Deep Space Operations Centre. The Hope 3 team sat up a little straighter at their consoles. Behind them, dozens of Probodyne staff had crammed themselves into the room, their eyes fixed on a large, static filled screen set into the far wall. Lodan and Dunney stood silently in the middle of the crowd, their eyes fixed on the flight control teams. The screen sputtered into life: System reports scrolled rapidly up the screen. The muted buzz of background conversation swelled, groups of engineers clenching their fists in suppressed triumph as, block by block, Hope 3's systems came online. The room erupted. Ignoring the cheering kerbals behind her, Jernie walked over to one of the consoles and conferred briefly with the controller perched in front of it. The controller nodded and typed in a single, brief command on his keyboard. A set of locking pins shot free, glinting as they sailed through the air and thudded into the coarse ochre dirt. Hope 3's sample arm unlimbered, joints flexing briefly, almost organically, before unfolding straight out. The scoop tip lowered, dipping into the soil and scooping out a shallow scrape. The arm slowly curled up and back, transferring its precious contents to the waiting instrument bay for preliminary x-ray analysis. Slowly, painstakingly, the detector crystals rotated, gathering the scattered radiation from the sieved sand grains; counting their constituent elements and transmitting the count back to Kerbin. At the Deep Space Operations Centre, the main screen displayed a blinking cursor at the foot of a bewildering list of checked-off commands and system status reports. The science team, and a handful of off-duty engineers stood around in small groups, conferring quietly amongst themselves. In the centre of the room, Dunney shifted his weight from foot to foot, eyes flicking from consoles to main screen and back again. Lodan stood beside him, face locked in an expressionless mask. The screen flickered and went blank. Dunney held his breath as four new lines of text appeared. Dunney blew out his cheeks. “Phosphorus and potassium," he said quietly. “with a handful of other elements that I'm almost positive are good secondary nutrients. Throw in that nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere and think our good colleagues at the Berelgan are going to find this very interesting indeed." He cocked his head at Lodan's slow nod, listening to the excited babble from the consoles. “I'd want the rest of the mineralogy results before calling it but I'd wager that kerbals could grow crops on Duna if they absolutely had to. I think your scouting party has just found what you were looking for, Director." --------------- The radar station gates hung open, the surrounding walls heavily pockmarked and chipped. Here and there, twisted steel reinforcements showed through jagged scars of shattered concrete. Six heavy, zipped up canvas bags lay in a row by one of the gateposts. Armed guards stood watch over a group of bloody and bruised kerbals, their torn, sand-encrusted uniforms barely recognisable; tight faces and restlessly searching eyes matched by equally grim vigilance from the guards. One of them risked a quick glance to the side, tensing himself to run. A clubbing blow between the shoulder blades sent him sprawling into the sand. “Put a lid on that, soldier!" An older looking guard, with a stripe on her uniform collar, stepped forward and helped the fallen kerbal to his feet. “We are not barbarians and we will treat non-combatants with respect. These kerbals are to be escorted to the harbour and they and their kermol compatriots are to be given safe passage back to Wakira." She surveyed the sullen Wakirans neutrally. “If they run, we will make no attempt to detain them. However, I would remind everyone that as of now, this island is part of the Forseti-Spierkan Confederacy. Our legal code include some...excessive penalties for acts of trespass or malicious damage and I do not recommend that anyone here incriminate themselves in such a manner. Now form up!" Down at the village, Enely squatted by one of his Kerm saplings. Gently he tugged at one of the glossy green leaves, stretching it out between finger and thumb, watching as it curled back into its cluster. Woodenly he climbed to his feet. “The soil is damp enough for this one too," he said tonelessly. In the middle of the village, where the tallest sapling had once stood, an enormous pit had been excavated; its edges bizarrely scalloped where long roots or other fibres had been eased from the soil. Thirty seven saplings stood in a row behind him, each replanted in a disproportionately sized canvas planter. The planter for the thirty-seventh and tallest sapling was almost grotesquely large but even so, the soil around its stem was broached in numerous places by root tips and thin, pale fibres emerging from the dense tangle beneath the surface. A pair of heavy duty trucks were parked nearby, one hitched to a wide, flat-bed trailer. The villagers stood in silent rows. Some of the younger kerbals still wore stunned expressions; the elders watched their Forseti guards expressionlessly or stared inscrutably out to sea. Even the kerblets were silent, holding tightly onto their parent's hands. One of the guards nodded at Enely and gestured at his companions. Eight heavy-set kerbals stepped forward, each taking hold of a rope handle around the top of the largest planter. One of them swore as they wrestled the unwieldy mass over to one of the waiting trucks and heaved it onto the tail lift. Hydraulics whined under the load. Another team of kerbals scrambled onto the back of the truck and dragged the planter onto the truck bed. Smaller teams of four picked up the smaller planters and hauled them across to the lift. None of the villagers made any attempt to help. As soon as the last sapling had been safely secured, the Forseti captain gestured at the flat bed trailer. “First two rows - up you go. Quickly now." One of the younger guards standing by the pit scuffed at the ground with his boot, uncovering a streak of white material. Curious, he knelt down, prodding at the pale, oddly textured fibre with his finger only to snatch it back at the sight of a thin pinkish fluid leaking from one end. Hastily, he stood up, shivering as he kicked soil back over the exposed fragment of fibre. Behind him the truck engines rumbled into life, carrying the Kerm saplings, and the first group of villagers, towards the harbour. << Chapter 53: Chapter 55>>

Perhaps I spoke too soon. Thanks for the feedback and for taking the time to read through this thread.

That used to be how I thought about it too but actually, I think it's the basic problem with Career Mode. Or it used to be - things might be better depending how the linked contracts work in practice. At the moment, you have the choice of fitting your space program around the contracts on offer, or doing a lot of busywork to save up for the missions you actually want to do. Either way, your program is being driven by the random contract generator, which doesn't make for a very satisfactory game. Planning becomes a matter of 'hoping the right contracts turn up' and likewise what you can choose to do is often limited by the contracts on offer: "Maybe I'd like to go to the Mun today - I quite fancy extending that space station I've got over there. Hmmm, no Mun contracts for me - guess I'll go back to launching satellites for a bit. Meh. Oooh - maybe I could decline some of those satellite contracts and hope that something more interesting turns up. Oh look - my rep just took a nosedive. Meh." It would be a lot better if Career Mode ran on a 'build it and they will come' approach: Put a fleet of telecom satellites into orbit - and rent them out for a monthly fee. Build a rocket, allocate it as a 'tourist rocket', set a price and see if anyone takes it. If your safety record is good and you're going somewhere interesting, you'll probably get a customer. In fact, right at the start, you'll probably get a load of customers purely from the novelty of being able to go to space. But if you charge too much you'll limit yourself to all but a very small handful of early adopters. Build a probe, stuff it with instruments and offer it out to your local research institutes. If you're feeling ambitious, go for a Cubesat arrangement with lots of little sats (all of which you can charge for) on a single bus. At the start of your program, people will probably pay through the nose for access to LKO. Later on, LKO might become less attractive (although there'll still be steady money there) whereas launching probes to Jool might be the next big thing. The point is that there should a lot of ways of making money and that the player is free to build the space program they want to build. Povided that they can figure out a way to monetise it, they can run the missions that they want to run on a schedule that they want to play to.

That's a bit selective isn't it? I'll give you fairings, heatshields and possibly service bays. Now that ion gliders aren't really feasible, xenon is only really useful once you get to space, whether that's by rocket or plane. Improved heating and reentry applies to either - unless you were planning to leave that shiny spaceplane permanently in orbit. Ore and fuel cells can equally well be used by planes or rockets. - - - Updated - - - Decouplers? Seriously? They're about as elementary to rockets as wings are to planes and hardly an indication that rockets were given a privileged position over planes.

I think the idea that "slot machine abuse" is a thing in the first place is absurd, let alone the idea that it's something that needs to be discouraged. How a player chooses to make their money should be up to them, ergo, the contracts that they choose to accept should be up to them. Yes there are easy contracts, yes there are hard contracts. Great - let the player choose the level of difficulty they wish to work with. Why should anybody give a rats behind whether players are grinding easy contracts or going for riskier, higher reward contracts. It makes no difference to anything else in the game, therefore I really can't see how "slot machining" the contract system can be considered any kind of abuse. Besides, if a feature is broken to the extent that players are "abusing" their way around it, the correct response is to improve the feature rather than punish players for it's alleged "abuse".

Right. This entire, farcical feature can be avoided by timewarping. Which 99% of the time has no other effect on gameplay, so players can use it at will, thus negating the rep penalty by adding a tedious workaround. Plus in a largely sandbox game, "There's always something else to do" is a shoddy excuse for not letting players do what they want to do. Certainly not. On the other hand if I have a company then I'm generally the one going out and finding the contracts rather than waiting for them to come to me. And sending away customers (politely) who either have no idea what your company is offering, or are proposing something that is entirely implausible or unreasonable for your company to be doing, is perfectly realistic strategy. Far from lowering the reputation of your company, it might actually improve it, since the company is clearly being run by somebody with a clue. Edit: Quick question for all the 'realism' proponents. Is there any practical real-world reputation difference between declining an offer and ignoring it in the hope that the offerer will just go away? Personally, I would say 'no there isn't', so again, this penalty makes no sense. In game, if Reputation was done on a per company basis, then this penalty might make some sense and introduce some interesting gameplay choices. At the moment it adds neither to gameplay nor realism.

Pity - I thought this was just hitting its stride and the plot summary looked good. Nice to see some other kerbonauts than the Original Three get some glory. Oh well - best of luck with the timeline project.

Aye. Sorry - that wasn't intended to be a snark at you but just a way of pointing out that I'd be happy with relatively modest updates to the space program part of KSP.

Completely agree with Foxter. For me, KSP is currently sadly lacking in the actual space exploration department. Or rather, space exploration has been allowed to fall behind fripperies like planes and boats. No - I don't really care about either. My choice - I understand it's not everyone's choice. Forget about icing - I'd like some cake please. I don't need c-beams glittering in the dark (in fact I actively dislike going military in KSP), I don't even need much to look at once I get to another world (although that would be nice). But I would really, really like to have some new stock parts for space stations. Some stock options for building things in orbit. Some stock options for building bases that aren't a motley collection of Hitchhiker modules and landing rockets. Heck lets push the boat out (har) and go for some actual moving parts, so that I can build a nice little rover, launch it in halfway sensible payload fairing and then unfold and deploy it after landing. If we can build Space Shuttle replicas in KSP, then I want to build decent Apollo 15-17 replicas too!