KSK

Just a quick follow up to my earlier post. I tried dropping the texture quality down to half and it's made everything much more stable, as in no crashes or graphical glitches at all in several hours of play. A big thank you to everyone who suggested that! System spec for the record: OS X 10.9.5 iMac 21.5 inch 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB

With respect, it seems a bit over the top to declare something 'far more limited' because single-stage-to-the-far-ends-of-the-solar-system no longer works.

Exactly. The station wasn't that big and was coming down engine first which makes a heatshield of sorts - as it did with DRE if I remember correctly. The crew compartments were spaceplane cabins - again designed for re-entry. The bits that did explode were the bits I'd expect to explode - ie the parts on the end on those girders that weren't hiding behind anything. And if the girders survived - well that's not too much of a stretch, given that large chunks of real life space stations survived re-entry too, albeit not from lunar orbit. Not entirely sure how Squad are meant to 'fix' this to be honest. If they crank up the stock heat damage too far, all the spaceplane flyers will be screaming blue murder that they can't land anything any more. They could perhaps make the fuel tanks a bit flimsier - if there's one thing that didn't look right with that station, it was the surviving Jumbo-64. Then again, KSP fuel tanks have always been ridiculously sturdy - and I suspect that messing around with that would break so many other parts of the game that it just wouldn't be worthwhile.

Another Mac user here, having much the same kind of problems. Will try dropping the texture quality and see if that helps. In the meantime - thank you for this thread - it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one having these issues and that they are being looked at.

Taking the fins off your lateral boosters might help. RV-8 steerable fins are also very helpful if you've unlocked them. I have a sort of similar craft that flies quite nicely: Does a round trip to Munar orbit although it can't do a landing.

You're talking about a high speed, high altitude aircraft. Sausages with feathers are entirely aerodynamic in that flight regime and aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. Edit: And lack of mercy for aircraft enthusiasts? Good grief, a new aero model, completely reworked aircraft parts and new aircraft parts weren't enough? If anything, I'd say it's the non-aircraft enthusiasts that could do with a little bit of love. We got ISRU but I'm not seeing any fancy new space station parts or rover parts or improved EVA capabilities etc. etc. Which is fine but it makes that particular comment more than a bit laughable.

Good grief. 1.0 is barely out of the door and people are talking about not rushing 1.1. How about letting Squad release at their own pace? Because it doesn't much matter what that pace is - some folks will complain that it's too long since the last release, others will complain of rushing.

No worries - good luck!

Sounds like you're going too fast. Are you getting a lot of Mach effects (white blurry lines) at 10K? The turbulence is probably knocking you into a tumble. Also - a quick example of a rocket that will get you to Munar orbit and back, although it's nowhere near enough for a landing. Flies pretty well. LV-T45 plus fins for stability in the atmosphere. SRBs thrust limited to 75%. Launch using SRBs only, start your gravity turn once you hit about 200m/s and make it a very gradual turn - no more flying up to 10K and pitching over 45 degrees.

Can't send a picture right now but this should get you to orbit: Upper stage: 1x FL-T400 tank, LV909 engine Lower stage: 3x FL-T400 tanks, LV-T45 engine, plus two side mounted RT-10 SRBs. Add a couple of pairs of fins between the SRBs for extra stability. That should lift a Mk1 pod plus materials lab into orbit with fuel to spare. You do need to unlock the LV909 first but suborbital flights with Goo pods or the Science Jr. plus crew reports and EVA reports where you can get them, should give you enough science to do that.

Will test this tonight - just started funds-to-science at 20% commitment. Minor aside - LF/O tanks make a serviceable, if not exactly pretty, jet fuel tank. Just use tweakables to empty out all the oxidiser first.

Ahh - fair enough. Yes, I have been using SAS. Putting the caps lock on for fine adjustments and tapping the pitch controls occasionally is enough, so it's not too strenuous a vigil. I'm not fighting the pod all the way down but yes, I do need to pay attention. Haven't encountered the ferry contracts yet, let alone unlocked the Mk1-2 pod but even once the heatshield bug is fixed, I'm thinking that slinging a hitchhiker module under the pod is going to do funky things to your centre of gravity. Intuitively, I wouldn't expect that to work well but intuition and spaceflight don't always mix well.

Oh - I like that - have some rep. Very neat way of building a streamlined rocket before unlocking fairings. So far I've used the service bay for holding Goo pods and thermometers on science missions or a probe core, battery and solar panels for my automated rescue/orbital tourism missions.

I can't speak to using anything larger than a Mk1 pod but I'm just not having this problem. I have two standard reentry vehicles: chute + pod + shield and chute + pod + equipment bay + shield. Using a shallow reentry trajectory and they both get through just fine. Granted, they both need a bit of flying now but that's just a case of making small adjustments to keep them lined up along the prograde vector. I'm not finding them wildly unstable. Other folks mileage clearly is varying though. *puzzled*

I'd start putting as much money as I could into cancer research and Alzheimer's research. I'm not sure about the latter but with aging no longer an issue the former becomes merely a matter of time.

I figure parachute cheese will be fixed at some point so I've been flying reentry profiles that get me through all the heating and shock effects at 8km, giving me plenty of time to slow to terminal velocity and pop the chutes. It has the nice side effect that overheating hasn't been a problem.

30-32k periapsis seems to be the sweet spot for me, at least for coming back from Kerbin orbit. Nice and stable, gives me plenty of time to deploy the chutes once I've gone sub-sonic. Still figuring out exactly how far east of KSC I need to put my periapsis for a precision landing but I'm getting there. Still tuning my Munar returns - at the moment they tend to be too cautious and I end up doing one aerobraking pass and coming round again.

Sure sounds like a big whoop to me! Nice work. Today -- I rescued a kerbal (everyone say hi to Sidfrey) who was stuck in a high inclined orbit halfway to the Mun. Eyeballed the ascending node, launched to within .7 degrees of the correct inclination, corrected, set up a 12km intercept, made midcourse correction burn, matched orbit, rescued old Sidfrey (who seemed rather happy to see my automated rescue vehicle) and got him home with about 1.4 units of fuel in the tank and 44 units of ablator on the heatshield. By far the most intense rendezvous I've ever flown in KSP and the new heat mechanics made the re-entry suitably nail-biting as well. Total blast!

Some centre of gravity care needed here. Depending which science module you're using you might find it's a bit light, which means that the heavy part of your re-entry vehicle (the pod) is furthest away from the heat shield. Unless you're very careful, the vehicle ends up flipping heavy side down, which means you end up doing a nose first re-entry, making that heat shield useless. At which point Bad Things happen. I found that out the hard way with the Science Junior. Ended up retrieving the science results in orbit, flying a very very twitchy re-entry, having Junior explode on me and then keeping all fingers firmly crossed that I was low and slow enough that the naked pod could survive.

No idea about 1. I'm afraid, and haven't noticed any problems with 2. personally, although I've only been landing Mk1 capsules from Kerbin orbit so far. With regard to 3. I am finding that I need to change my old re-entry profile quite a bit. I'm guessing that parachute drag will be changed at some point so I'm trying to get into the habit of flying 'sensible' re-entries from the start. Specifically, only deploying chutes once I'm through the fire and ideally through the aerodynamic shock effects too. Setting my periapsis to about 30km and coming in shallow seems to work OK because it gives me more time to slow down before deploying my parachutes. That's for return from Kerbin orbit - I'll probably need to go shallower still for a return from Munar orbit.

I don't think they've been nerfed, or like Sedativechunk said, you really need to fly them and see how they work for you with the new aerodynamic model, rather than just comparing stats. I suspect they'll benefit a lot more from thrust limiting than they used to. Depending on how heavy your rocket is, an un-tweaked SRB might be putting out more thrust than you actually need off the launch pad.

I'm finding my designs to be a bit twitchier but not disastrously so. Turning too sharply too early is almost guaranteed to start a tumble, so old style 'flying straight up to 10k and pitching over to 45 degrees' is out but apart from that I'm good. My turns just start lower and are more gradual, which means my ascent profiles tend to be more realistic now rather than less. The new aerodynamics model makes planes a whole lot more fun though. My planes will actually fly and stay balanced (with some trimming) without SAS now. SAS is more of an auto-trim function than a 'keep this on or fall out of the sky' mode.

Overall first impressions are pretty good. Starting right at the beginning: The launcher works now (haven't had much luck with this in Mac OSX) and the dramatically improved loading time is very welcome. I'm still finding it a bit crashy which is disappointing. I've had quite a few lockups and graphical glitches around the Space Centre, usually in the VAB/SPH or transitioning from them back to the main screen. Time to see if I can make them reproducible and file a bug report. New flavour text for completing contracts is nice. Procedurally generated babble for the contract description has been improved but still isn't great. Flavour text for the tech tree needs a bit an overhaul in places - some of them are kind of a running joke which works for the order in which the parts were added to the game but doesn't make a lot of sense now that the player encounters them in a totally different order. Launchpad smoke is cool! Female kerbals are cool! Tourist kerbals are cool! Definitely enjoying the new aero and heat models. See 5thHorseman's comments. The tech tree has its quirks but overall I'm finding that Career mode is much more strategic now, which is a good thing. I'm actually pondering different directions for my space program, trading off monetary costs vs research cost, figuring out which contract types I'm going to focus on and what tech I need to get to do that. Not had any major funding problems, although I'm hardly rolling in cash either and science seems a lot slower to come by now, which I'm needing to take into account. Haven't dabbled in Strategies yet since I'm not really running enough of a surplus in anything to make it worth swapping for anything else. Overall - well lets just say that I'm looking forward to getting home tonight...

+Rep for the constructive feedback. If I could offer a slightly different perspective on the tech tree? I agree that there are a couple of odd placements (the micro-landing legs being one) but on the whole, I'm finding that I'm thinking a lot more about my tech progression now and how that ties in with the contracts I'm taking and the next few mission types I want to do. I would say this is a good thing on the whole. As an experienced (although I wouldn't say expert) player, I didn't really notice that first difficulty spike but right now I'm seriously pondering what to do. Go for Fuel Systems and the necessary building upgrades to do crewed Munshots? Go for a cheaper but tech heavy approach, pick up Miniaturisation, Electrics and whatever that small engine tech is, and go for some early probes (and pick up my Explore Mun/Minmus contracts that way). Or focus on LKO operations, research-over-time and space tourism by beelining for Command Pods, then unlocking the Science Lab and Hitchhiker parts? It's all trade-offs and figuring out how to balance science vs funds, which I'm actually quite enjoying. What might be useful is for another early 'get some science' contract to go after the 'take a crew report from the launchpad' one. Something to point new players in the direction of adding a Goo pod or Materials Bay to their rockets perhaps. You can get an awful lot of early science that way which should make it easier to pick up a couple of 45 point techs, as well as being generally useful for climbing the rest of the tech tree.

Just settling down to an evening of 1.0 fun! First impressions are good - the OS X launcher works and my goodness that was the fastest load time I've ever had with KSP. Onwards to space!