KSK

Interesting article. I had mixed feelings about the way the single game was won against the AI. (Attack back of base, withdraw when AI responds, watch AI go back to what it was doing, rinse-wash-repeat.) Granted, it was a lot harder to execute but that kind of exploit spamming seemed a bit ‘same old, same old’ to me. Much effort expended in training an advanced AI - and it still gets stuck in that kind of decision-making loop.

Now *that* is a seriously badS looking piece of hardware! And forget 'Heart of Gold' (cool name though it is) - Starship Raptor is where it's at for naming that first launch vehicle.

Can't interrupt a man's cribbage match... On a serious note - thanks folks. I'd say more but... yeah. Thanks.

Trust me, I have the same worry. Although, unfortunately, I just have to put it out of mind as one of those things that I can't do much about. I'll own up to a certain amount of procrastination at times (although it's never quite gotten to out-and-out writer's block) but when all's said and done - I'm writing this in my spare time on top of a full time job, a marriage, and sundry other commitments, so it can and does take a back seat to other life events. I'm also pretty sure that this particular boat sailed a long time ago, as folks disappeared from the forum for other reasons or, as you say, get hacked off with the slow update pace and leave the thread. That is a shame and it makes me appreciate the good folks that are still following along all the more. Right now, it's looking like my recent change of job was a good move. Can't tell you what it's like leaving work of an evening and actively looking forward to going back the next day. On the other hand, I drastically underestimated how much of a time-suck selling a house (and finding another one) would be. It's also fair to say that the next chapter has been kicking my ass a bit. It's one of those ones where I could sum up the significant events in a couple of lines, said significant events are definitely moving the plot forward (but I'm not sure how interesting they are as such) and... well they aren't especially cheerful. On top of that, its a chapter where I don't know anything about the stuff I'm writing about and I want to get the details at least plausible, if not actually right. So yeah. Anyhow, for those that wish, here's a small (and definitely first draft) spoiler which should hopefully give you an idea of what I'm talking about. And for those who have been following other fics on this forum over the years - there's a bit of a shout-out and clue in there as well...

Forget about building a rocket in a clean room. In American America, rocket is clean room.

I gather that a concave belly helps with the , ahem ‘stacking problem’ when producing more turtles. Those big shells do have drawbacks.

It’s very easy to tell the sex of a turtle. Females have flat bellies, males have concave ones.

Totally agree with @ZooNamedGames, apart from the keters thing. That sounds like hanging a label on something for the sake of it having a label more than anything else but reasonable people may reasonably differ on that one. However, in my opinion, adding real-world units to KSP parts sounds like an absolutely fabulous way to create a never-ending flow of pointless forum threads arguing over the realism and/or balance of parts. To which the answers (after many, many pages of descending grumpiness) will almost inevitably boil down to one of 'it's for gameplay balance' or 'there's a mod for that if you really care.' Or maybe I've just been around here too long. Edit: Ahh yes, elitism. I forgot about elitism "When you start making or messing with mods and you have the mind of an engineer or a practitioner in any logic-intensive field, you're going to want things to be physically accurate and measurable at every turn. These little things don't mean much to the simple player, but for the core fan-base, people who know the various maths and sciences, these things matter a lot." Speaking as a filthy casual - my apologies, 'simple player' - I can only give thanks to the kindly folks who wrote Real Solar System and other scaling mods. Why, think of the pain caused to our metrology-minded, logical overlords every time they fire up stock KSP and gaze befuddled on those implausibly dense planets.

Homework done! And I see/saw/stood in awe at what you did here: "And just before his head died, he was said to have spoken a prophesy: 'ye shadow of the first, ye whisper of the second, as empires rise and fall, so shall the revelation of the third bring the end of this age... and bring the hell that waits beyond." That's some master-level foreshadowing right there. Particularly when I recall all the debate over what the third installment of this trilogy was going to be called...

Some folks don't have any options other than stock due to their choice of gaming platform. Speaking personally, back when I was playing KSP, I'd have limited play time. Hence I'd prefer to fire up the game and actually play it, rather than fiddling around with the eleventy-umpteen mods out there. Speaking personally again, I found the attitude amongst a certain section of the playerbase that everyone should be playing modded and/or that Squad should just focus on making the stock game a platform for mods, to be tedious, patronising, and presumptious on other people's goodwill and free time. After that I can't speak for anyone else but I can speculate. Some folks just prefer to play the game, balanced as the devs intended. Some folks prefer the challenge of doing everything in stock. Some folks spend more time building random vehicles/dioramas/buildings/mechanical contrivances on Kerbin and don't find many (or any) mods to be that useful. Some folks find the performance penalty of running mods to be unacceptably high. I'm sure there are other reasons. Incidentally, if you want a less grumpy answer next time, you might try framing your post as an honest question rather than tacking on a passive-aggressive snark in small font.

You can't... But some things are worth the pain ye ken?

Hello and welcome to "KSK's random cookery minute." We've had to phase out onions from most of our food because they do not agree (in occasionally painful ways) with my good wife. Turns out that two sticks of celery plus two dried porcini mushrooms (crumbled in for that umami goodness) makes an acceptable substitute for a medium onion in most of what we cook*. YMMV of course and there are a couple of dishes where we do miss the onion but they're relatively few and far between. Much to our our surprise, it has to be said, particularly since I'm not generally a big fungus fan. I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. *we don't make French onion soup but I'm willing to bet that celery and mushroom soup would lack a certain je ne sais quoi.

Pfft - all the cool kids wear celery in their lapels anyway. Onions schmonions.

Totally. Macerated pigeon would make a dreadful propellant - the ISP hit would be awful. Tis a serious point though. Presumably it gets taken back into the (then completed) hangar for installing the actual flight engines and other important bits and pieces. Meanwhile they're building the stainless steel bits in parallel with the hanger? Although that's total speculation on my part.

I sympathise with both this and @Rocket In My Pocket's point of view here. Speaking for myself. I got quite excited when the Barn was previewed - I liked the idea behind it, which fitted well with my own headcanon of a bunch of plucky amateurs (to begin with at any rate) going into space for the sheer heck of it. Similarly, it strikes me that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to come up with a set of parts which make for reasonably plausible looking rockets whilst retaining their own identity and (importantly) that slighly daffy sense of fun that the older parts had. It's not like functional rockets all have to look the same. Look at a real-world US rocket. Now look at a real-world Russian (for want of a better description) rocket. Both perfectly functional but you'd never confuse one for the other. For that matter, look at the Saturn V. Lots of surface detail, all of it having some function or other. There's no reason why a KSP fuel tank couldn't have all sorts of functional-looking greebling that, put together, make for a uniquely Kerbal looking rocket. Heck, going back to this thread, it could be something as simple as the number of bells on a particular engine. Tricouplers have been a thing pretty much since the beginning of KSP - why not have three bells on that re-worked Poodle? It would look a bit different and it harks back to early Kerbal design decisions. Sadly (for me), KSP seems have become a plain S. It's definitely a Space game still, but the Kerbal and the Program parts of KSP (which are the bits that I personally cared most about), haven't seen much love for an awful long time. And I've long since given up hope that much is going to change on that front. So it goes - after all, my views on it are just another voice amongst many, and I'm no longer inclined to carry on banging my drum for changes that show no sign of ever happening. But, by the same token, I got bored with KSP years ago and apart from the occasional spark of enthusiasm (which never translated into reinstalling the game), I can't honestly say that I've ever had a serious yearning to pick it up again.

As opposed to all those entirely non-flammable rocket fuels presumably? Edit: Scratch that comment before this thread devolves into an argument as to whether kerosene counts as a flammable fuel.

Depends what you mean by interact and whether you count museum exhibits but: Met Chris Hadfield in person and have the photo to prove it. To this day, I remain proud of my iron self control in not squeeing or falling over my own feet. Have attended talks by other astronauts, most notably Tim Peake. Spent a very happy day at the Smithsonian air and space museum. No shortage of good space stuff there. Man, that was a total kid-in-a-candy-store day. Went to this exhibition and saw a lot of old Soviet equipment, engineering mockups etc. And what else would a card-carrying Space Nerd wear to an exhibit of Soviet space hardware than his Gagarin t-shirt? Which proved to be good for striking up very interesting conversations with the museum staff.

It doesn't sound as though you're taking much notice of the feedback you've been getting from the moderators: Instead I'm seeing that since almost nobody liked your idea of including a 'dislike' button, you now want to get rid of the system altogether. Which seems more than a bit petty at first sight. Am I being unfair? Quite possibly - but if you don't bother to explain why you want something, then people will jump to their own conclusions.

Given that it was supposed to be a mini-ecosystem and that they spent about a million dollars on it (I think), I'm going with no. Also, whilst they were happy to announce their success, they weren't exactly slow to announce their failure a few days later. That doesn't seem particularly secretive to me. As to what caused the failure - we'll probably never know. Heck - they might never know.

Twistier than a Moebius pretzel baked in nine-dimensional space! Go for it!

Title says it all. Article is a bit short on detail and a bit long on speculation but it’s still an interesting result I think.

Yes - I did ask Jonton about all that sort of thing once. Old Kerba isn't the greatest language for pithy epithets but his reply sounded rather pointed all the same. As far as I could tell, the literal translation was that he wished me to go forth, be fruitful, yet mind my own business. Not sure how that works in the modern vernacular... And yes - Star Wars has a tendency to do that. Probably because Lucas helped himself fairly liberally to various literary devices when writing it.

And so we finally come round to the story title... Great work as always!

Well, when a mummy kerbal and a daddy kerbal love each other very much... And on a serious note, I thought that was reasonably clear from that chapter. Both Edgas' and Val's deeds against the Shadow have been prophecied and it's been clear for quite a while that there's been a behind-the-scenes faction that was aware of those prophecies. Check out the 'Heavy is the Head' interlude in Whispers of the Kraken - I think it was - for example. So when both prophecied champions of the Light were born to the same parents, it makes sense that one child (Edgas) was hidden for his own safety and as a last resort if anything happened to the other. Much like Luke and Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. Or alternatively, I could be completely up the wrong tree about all of this.

Good point. Do you think it would be fair to say that most in-flight failures have been down to pump problems? Combustion instabilities are definitely bad (the F1 example being the one that I'm aware of) but I would have thought they mostly get taken care of during development? Although I can well imagine that some unknown unknowns during flight could lead to combustion instability.