KSK

Heh - normally I'd agree with that sentiment but I'm not that surprised to find a lot of affection for the founder of a real rocket company on this particular forum.

I thought that's how they managed to keep both hands on the controls and simultaneously hold onto their rocks-on-strings for timing burns?

Nuts - that's what you get for being in a hurry. Mistook cost for capacity. Yeah, this is starting to look less useful.

What an inspirational way to end the week - thanks tntristan12! Am grinning like Jeb right now. Bit misty eyed too to tell the truth.

Just thinking aloud here. To support eleven kerbals you'll need three Hitchhiker modules. Then you'll need a lab, a Rockomax X200-16 and an FLT-400 (or equivalent tankage) for the liquid fuel and four of the FL-R25 monoprop tanks. Plus power and structural parts but there's too many combinations of those for a rough calculation. Total cost for all that (assuming the Wiki is up to date): 3,200 + 850 + 3,200 + 4,000 +12,000 = 23,250 funds. Total mass = 7.5 + 3.5 + 4.6 + 11.25 = 26.85 tons. Lets round that up to 30 tons and 30,000 funds. Probably easier to do that in two launches to keep the payload sizes manageable. Should be possible to put together two 15 ton launchers for well under 150,000 funds. I would think it would be possible to make quite a decent profit, although I doubt it'll be the quickest or easiest funds you've made.

Sounds like a great idea! I've got a vision of the kerbal version of this photo. Jeb, Bill and Bob perched on a girder, in orbit, eating snacks. It also sounds like something that Engineers could get a bonus for, although I'm not really sure how that would work.

Yup. Amongst other things, Kerbal Construction Time does this. Or it did - I haven't seen the latest version. Add sufficient parachutes to dropped stages to slow them below 10m/s and they'd be automatically recovered.

I'm not sure about needing each other but I agree that would be a sensible scenario that pools the expertise of both sides. NASA doesn't need SpaceX (although it may be well advised to use them) since it could use SLS. Likewise, SpaceX is building it's own body of know-how and experience - for example, I recall that NASA were very interested in their hypersonic retropropulsion technique for booster recovery, since that would be applicable to Mars landings. I don't think either have any practical experience of designing and building Mars capable crewed spacecraft. The issue for both is funding. NASA seems unlikely to garner the sustained funding and political will for a Mars-shot. SpaceX certainly has the will but without NASA funding (see above) they're going to need to launch an awful lot of satellites to pay for a Mars mission. Hopefully their strategy will pay off and they manage to lower their launch costs to the point where overall demand for launches starts to increase and we start to see some kind of upward spiral in spaceflight development.

Not sure - can you transfer resources under warp?

I don't know how repeatable this is but we do have that Strategy to exchange a 'lump-sum' of science points for funds now. Does that help at all on Hard mode? Swap some of that spare science for funds, reduce the grind a bit and reduce that 'too much science' problem. Genuine question - I haven't played on Hard mode so I don't know how well its balanced. On Normal, I'm finding that science from contracts is really more of a bonus than anything else - to progress through the tech tree I'm needing to get out into space. Which I like because now I'm running a space exploration program supported by an auxilliary commercial program, rather than a mix of disconnected contracts as I was in 0.9. Caveat, I haven't gotten out of the Kerbin system yet - don't know how well this scales once you get to interplanetary contracts. On the other hand, I could live without that bonus science, so I wouldn't be sad if it was removed. Not keen on having yet another difficulty slider to monkey around with though.

I like this idea. It could make for some interesting new contracts such as removing debris from orbit or retrieving defunct satellites.

And here we are back to this nonsense again. No need to use wings at all. No sir. None at all. Anyhow, until somebody runs that little test that NathanKell suggested, I'm out of here too.

Cobblers. It would take me far longer than five minutes to build that X-wing. Does that mean it becomes more creative if I make it because it took me longer? Or does it mean that you're just more skilled at building X-wings than me. So point me at the thread. I'm not asking you to sift through all 60 pages looking for a choice quote. Probably not. Which is one of the reasons I agreed that non-wing structural parts were OK. If wings are generating more drag per unit area than say, a girder or a structural panel, then yes, having alternatives to wing parts is a good idea. See my earlier point. If wing parts have arbitrarily higher drag per unit area, then yeah - lets have some alternatives. But otherwise - it's entirely possible to build aerodynamic looking craft using wing parts - as wings. Using them to build panelvans, not so much. There's also big difference between looking aerodynamic and actually being aerodynamic. You can build a beautifully streamlined panelvan - chances are that streamlining won't be enough to compensate for the fact that you've just bumped up the cross-sectional area of your aircraft by sticking a dirty great box around it. In what way is a zero drag part not a hack? If something is forming part of the skin of your aircraft it's going to cause drag. Doesn't matter if its there for structural, lift generating or aesthetic reasons - it's going to cause drag. We can argue about how much drag it should cause and whether too much drag is too limiting - that's a fair discussion. Zero drag parts though are just a hack. Can't get the panelvan to fly because it's too draggy? Just switch off the drag! Presto - your creativity can fly unfettered. Except why bother. Or at least why bother worrying about aerodynamics at all - just Hyperedit the thing to orbit. As has been pointed out before on this thread, the X-wing is a bad example. One - it is fairly aerodynamic, two it's an airbreathing rocket with enough thrust to brute-force past any aerodynamic deficiencies it does have.

Also @Capt Snuggler. There should also be a mechanism to dissuade people shooting kerbals into space without reliable launch escape options, firing them out of catapults or putting them on chairs strapped to SRBs. I agree with the spirit of this thread but I think it's enough that players can add living quarters if they so wish. Besides, it would be difficult to impose a meaningful penalty for cramming kerbals together for months at a time (and who knows - maybe they like that. ). Engineer can't fix as much stuff? No problem, just take two of them, ditch the pilot and add a probe core.

Probably not but it's nice to have the creative freedom, no? Hmm, the only person I've seen complaining about the X-Wing is you using it to make a point. Feel free to point me at anybody else's comments though. Woah - hang on a minute here. Adding parts that make the craft look aerodynamic but are also out of the airstream? I'm not sure how good part occlusion in KSP is (so I could be entirely wrong here) but surely if the parts really are out of the airstream, they won't be contributing to lift or drag? So if they are causing drag, presumably they're not out of the airstream? For example, so far as I can tell, your fighter plane example where you add the wing parts to box in the fuel tanks - those wing parts are still going to be in the airstream. Edit: Sorry - getting myself muddled here. Sure - if your extra parts really are out of the airstream then they shouldn't contribute to drag or lift. Agreed. Your fighter plane example is still a bad one though since the extra parts (to me) look very much in the airstream and so should contribute to drag even if they were modded to eliminate their lift. Or they're OK with trading off a bit of creative freedom for a bit more realism. Which is just as valid as insisting on changing the aerodynamics to suit your playstyle. "because a few players feel like everyone should play the game in their way" is a complaint that cuts both ways. Personal opinion - adding structural parts without lift is OK - not every part of a plane is intended to generate lift. Parts without drag is just a hack. Unless the part is so thoroughly occluded that it is out of the airstream, it's going to be causing drag.

Me - sort of. I'm writing the main copy in Pages and I can apparently export it as an epub file. I'm writing other bits in an unholy mishmash of text editors (depending which device I happen to be on at the time) but it all ends up in the Pages version in the end. That's my excuse for any formatting snafus and I'm sticking to it. Thanks! I've got a story arc planned for Val that I hope you'll like. She's going to be fun character to write I think. More generally, I've got the rest of Part 3 plotted out now and a sketch of what Part 4 is going to look like. So there's a bit to go yet - but I do have an endpoint in mind and an epilogue planned out to round things off. @VelocityPolaris, I must confess that I'm not familiar with Macey's stuff, although I have heard a lot about it. Sounds like this would be a good time to find out - thanks for the heads-up!

Uh, we really can't build robots with these capabilities yet. Making parts with a 3D printer is one thing, building parts that can assemble themselves into new robots is quite another. And I think you're drastically overstating what neural networks can do as well. They are not a general purpose learning computer, let alone one that can 'share experiences' from other robots. Finally - there's a very big difference between flattening one town and taking over the world. Edit - for the mechanical bear, I climb a hill or dig a really big pit to trap the bear before it gets to me. Or go upstairs. Never say never but for the forseeable future this sounds like solid science fiction to me. Sorry. - - - Updated - - - Shhhh - that's what they want everyone to think.

Thanks for the reasoned response. Have to admit that I don't remember the overlays - I keep an eye on the dev notes but those passed me by. On the other hand, I do remember the Barn, the initial iteration of the crew experience system and especially, the first draft resources system where the dev team were very engaged with the community and/or honest about why stuff got ditched. They didn't necessarily give the answer that everybody wanted to hear (we ditched this because we didn't think it was fun), but they were honest. Likewise, I was impressed with a recent comment from HarvesteR about the 'changing sphere of influence at high warp' bug, where he admitted that it had actually turned out to be a pretty simple one to squash. Honesty also works both ways. Gamers are an enthusiastic bunch (which is great!) but sometimes I think it would be better (and more conducive to further honesty) if some of that enthusiasm was tempered a bit. It's gotta be difficult for the dev team to do any kind of thinking aloud about the state of the game and what they plan for it, when their smallest utterance (no matter how carefully hedged) is a cue to stoke up the Hype Train. Regarding passing KSP off as a full release - I think this is always going to be one of those grey areas. Personally, I think Squad have been pretty up-front about what they consider to be the release version - and for what its worth I think they've priced the release version in-line with that vision. If they had released KSP at AAA price levels then I'd totally agree with you. But they haven't. Also, on a personal note, I do agree with you to an extent. To my mind, Career mode could do with being a bit richer and I've posted several comments to that effect. On the other hand, I am also very pleasantly surprised about how much difference a couple of extra contract types (especially the overhaul to the World First contracts), some new flavour text and a reworked tech tree has made. (Yes, I admit it - I like the new tech tree! ) Career mode feels much more strategic to me now, which it didn't before.

I would also like a two-kerbal pod. It would make rescue missions / tourism missions a bit easier, or at least give you another option besides waiting to unlock the three kerbal pod, going with an automated vessel or kludging together a multi capsule ship. Maybe you could unlock it in the same tier of the tech tree that you get electricity in. So going downs one route through the tree gives you more crewed options, going down another starts you off on un-crewed tech, according to preference. If nothing else I would dearly love to be able to launch a pilot and a scientist together for a bit of an early science boost. Or to level a pilot and an engineer together so that by the time I get to running missions where I care about things breaking far from home, I can - with a bit of planning ahead - have an engineer or two levelled up and ready to go.

Without wishing to be a Squad apologist, could I ask how you would have handled community expectations? So far as I can see they did a pretty decent job. Regular dev notes from the lead developer including a direct warning regarding the new aerodynamics model, listening to feedback on the small stuff like the Round 8 tank, getting the 'tuning' releases in ASAP, so that players only have to change a few days worth of new designs, rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and leaving the discussion to fester. Yes it sucks to have your 1.0 craft not work so well in 1.02 but better to sort that out now rather than at whenever 1.1 comes out and everyone has to rework/relearn months worth of stuff. The new aero/heat models (which I think is where most of the vitriol is coming from) were highlighted as 'something that will break some designs but something that we're trying to balance to keep some of the crazy contraption spirit of KSP alive' (my wording but I think the tone is about right). That's pretty clear expectation setting right there. KSP is a sandbox style game that deals with a complex subject. I don't think there's any realistic way of balancing that 'correctly' so that it suits all tastes. I'm not even sure if the parallel beta approach would help that much (although that is a good and positive suggestion) - assuming Squad could find a build to make all the Beta testers more or less happy, I can almost guarantee that we'd get the same kind of responses from everyone else that we've seen so far once the beta releases were merged into the main build. I think the Squad approach of listening to feedback, responding to some (but not all) requests and making the game moddable enough that folks can tweak the rest to suit themselves is the right one for this style of game. Trying to accommodate absolutely everyone's requests in Stock will just lead to the gaming equivalent of a camel - a horse designed by committee. Thankfully, the KSP community is pretty level headed on the whole. I don't even want to think about the levels of forum rage this kind of thing would have generated in other communities. - - - Updated - - - I'm not saying you're wrong but that's a pretty big novelty to get over, especially if you haven't been playing various builds of the game for two years or more. I would say that the game feels finished but a couple of extra layers of polish wouldn't hurt if somebody could find the time. Quick example - I like the extra bits of flavour text you get for completing various contracts. But the tech tree flavour text could use some reworking - the description of the FL-100 tank makes no sense unless you already know it was added to the game after the 400 tank, for example. That might be a nice little project actually, if I can find the time. A small mod that keeps the current tech tree structure but makes the flavour text consistent. I also agree that more stuff to do planet-side would be nice but that also sounds like a pretty big job. Paid expansion territory to my mind but I appreciate that that's a whole other can of worms. At the least I'd love to see Kerbin more thoroughly fleshed out (rather than just a spaceport on a large field) and I think that's one area where I've at least tried to put my metaphorical money where my mouth is.

Nice - I like a good origin story! Looking forward to the next instalment.

I like this idea. I was also wondering about changing the rescue mission mechanics slightly so that the player has the option of either returning the rescued kerbal to his/her company for an additional rep boost, or hiring them at a discounted rate, rather than getting them for free. Purely a personal thing - I can never bear to leave a kerbal stranded in orbit but (especially in the early game) I can't really be bothered clogging up my roster with a bunch of engineers and scientists that I can't do much with.

I agree. There's not a great deal you can do with early planes in stock right now - and those 'early' planes are fairly advanced jets. Beginning with prop-planes would make the early game very dull, or as Aanker says, something you blow through quickly on the way to the current technological starting point. It would be a fun mod to try though and I'd definitely be in favour of having more early game plane contracts in stock. Atmospheric planes are really fun to fly now, it would be nice to have more to do with them.

Aesthetics are highly subjective. Your particular idea of an aesthetic design no longer works but I've seen plenty of alternatives in this thread alone that do and that I would consider extremely aesthetic. With regards to under-performing designs, there's a simple remedy for that. Stick a docking port on it, fly up a fuel tanker and dock them together. Presto - that under-performing design can suddenly go almost anywhere you want. As opposed to sulking because you can no longer build a carbon copy of your old design and dismissing any alternatives as 'hotdogs'?

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that Squad figured most players would be content with a new aerodynamic model, a slew of new aircraft parts including undercarriage that actually works, proper cargo bays, larger wings, wet wings, airbrakes etc. etc. Sticking in a kludgy tweakable to ensure backward compatibility with a class of old designs that were largely prompted by the need to cheese as many wings onto a spaceplane as possible to give it sufficient lift... probably wasn't very high on the list. Edit: With that said - if somebody can write a mod for it then why not. Edit: I also recall a set of dev notes where HarvesteR was talking about the new aero model and the need to balance it to allow some room for crazy contraptions still. Given that I've seen flying podracers and X-wings in orbit, I'd say he got that part about right. Another reason why adding that kind of tweakable probably wasn't high on the priority list.