roosterr

I am glad you posted this, I was part of the first poll two years ago, and I too wondered if the age demographic had changed. Surprisingly, so far it hasn't, mostly kids still it seems.

Your points are all valid. "Hating" school can be fixed. There are ways to make it fun. I used to hate school and did very poorly before I was an adult. It was a giant babysitter, pointless, worthless, a waste of time MOSTLY. 5-10% of it was actual learning, AT BEST. As an adult I have been back to school, almost all trade schools, for IT, and other. I am very successful today. I have less than one year of "college" under my belt. It too was a waste. My adult education was APPLIED to something that was in use in the present, and much of it fun (software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, etc.). Sure you can get that stuff at a traditional school, but they deliver way too much fluff in the middle and present it all in a very uninteresting way. Transporting your body to a brick and mortar establishment is a waste of time and resources (== money) in MOST cases. As for games: I have been a long time gamer, mostly sims get my attention. Here is what I have learned from it: how to fly an airplane, WWII History, How to use modern military equipment and tactics (Project Reality: BF2), and now rocket science. All of the above I have bought books and researched these items outside of the game. My children are learning in much the same way, by the introduction of the more stimulating aspects and the next thing you know, whenever they see things in RL that are related to the game, they inquire. Its like trickery, but its working

I had to, it was a KOSHA mandate, and now its costing our program a fortune. The money we put into safety systems, we get from other areas, like fuel refinement and material downgrades. Kerbals used to be a dime a dozen; replaceable. Now that these little dudes are preparing for "Career's" at our complex, we have to make it appear as if we care. The Kerbin population at large is now starting to take notice of these "hero's", and this is what drives interest and investment capital. So now we have to protect Hero's for the good of the population or else the funding is at risk. As one of our first selected Kerbalnauts put it: "No Buck Kerman = no bucks"

Great point! FYI, Squad has recently improved their ordering page on their store, it is much nicer, intuitive and easy. As for Steam, I prefer not to have another service running in the background of my computer and scanning my installations. I also like to keep my older versions of KSP, with saves. Since Steam "updates" I am not sure you are able to keep the originals intact. ?

Rendezvous: realizing that selecting the target and then getting relative motion ticks in relation to the target object (similar as you would for a celestial body) to rendezvous with made rendezvous and docking much much easier.

I have seen this problem. If you put struts, fuel lines, winglets or any other parts that "clip" into the engine section they explode shortly after launch. "Falling off" may be a different problem, but I have seen mine go "poof" and blow up. Remove all parts that may be touching the engines and see what happens.

The current education system in the US is failing. The "old school" still persist in K-12 academia. Now that we are fully enveloped in the Information Age, new ways of teaching and learning (although learning is an inherent and unique instinct or property in most individuals) are available, and for the better as I see it.. People like you are thinking outside the box to leverage the new tools we have for learning at our disposal, and it is less expensive than ever (why is traditional school getting MORE expensive?) Enough of my thoughts, how about an example: I work at a State run college (yes I see the waste from the inside, albeit we do have some very forward thinking teachers here and actually we are an "... Institute of Technology" school, luckily). There is teacher here who does some brilliant things related to his class (Industrial Electricity, wind power, etc.) and outside class (building trebuchet's, sailboats, etc. with his students). He home-schooled his four boys, mostly. With a mostly home-school educations, 3 of his 4 boys went to MIT, the other is at Westpoint. We too home school our two boys, so I asked the guy what his secret was for the successes of his kids. His answer: "I never bought them toys that they didnt have to build first" My six year old plays KSP. Although it is not his favorite, he has been playing since he was 5 and now gravitates to games that are like KSP. Both boys LOVE lego's and are now getting into Minecraft. Shootemups: I wont deny them in the house, but I certainly dont offer them up and wont encourage it. Most of those games are pretty mindless. And I am a gun owner.

I just shopped hard for an upgrade-able most "bang for the buck" PC and finally purchased one. BTW, I have been an IT guy/gamer for a long, long time. This was the first desktop I have ever bought in my life. I built my first PC from parts back in the 90's. It is now cheaper to buy them pre-built, and my time is more valuable than it used to be. SO; Asus I believe makes the best bang for your buck PC. I also looked at Acer. I bought the Asus Essentio model. The Essentio model starts at $450. Mine was $899 (OK, $900), with the I7 CPU and an nVidia 620, including shipping (free shipping if ordered from Best Buy, even to Alaska). And of course it comes with the Asus MoBo stock. I am sure you could get one of the lesser models and still have enough money left over for a decent graphics card. In my case my current/previous graphics card is better than the one that came with the box, so I swapped it. BTW, I hate Windows 8. Yes I have "figured it out" but MS failed by making you jump through too many hoops to do things that used to be simple. Fail! I have had my new Asus for over a week, and it is working great. I am now getting into recording my flights.

This is my approach also. I have an i7 3.4 GHz CPU with 3.9 boost, and 1600 MHz FSB. Even so, at about 350 parts or more, I get low frame rates. The good news is that since the SAS improvements, I use less struts now. Less wobbling at launch = less struts needed. Struts were a huge percentage of my part count in the past. Now they are a fraction of what they used to be.

Note my flag and plaque in my sig. Yes, I had this in mind when I created them. We are Kommies, with Kommunity Centers, and with a 1984 Orwellian twist (thought crimes). Another unintended, but now proud result of my flag: It shows up in the VAB, so now my Kerbal rocket builders have "Obey you will" hovering above their little heads all day and all night long. Notice there are no Kerbin cities, everyone lives and works there, 24/7. But since they have been raised that way, it is situation normal, they know no other life, and they think they are happy.

I used to play that way; serious about Kerbal lives. BUT, now I realize the extra time involved in returning stranded Kerbals home takes a LOT away from craft development and mission time. So unfortunately, I had to give up that aspect of realism. I do love the sim aspect of the game and I do try to keep it real. However with my limited time to play, I cannot afford it. REVERT is a great thing, great idea, no kerbals killed, its a time machine. One thing I DO do now: Escape systems. I put a nice one on my Saturn V Kerpollo craft and I will be continuing the practice on future missions.

I voted no, BUT, if you had to pay for Mechjeb or a similar computer guidance system (like real-life rockets use), I would do that. I hope that Mechjeb or somthing like it becomes a stock part on full release. Otherwise do I want the challenge of what the developers have to offer us OTB.

My current mission is a close as possible Kerpollo redux (Saturn V model). And per your comments, I too want everything to burn and jettison at about the same time as the real deal for proper disposal of stages. My first go-round, although a nice rocket, dropped the first stage on top of the launch pad from about 8k. Initiating the gravity turn as to jettison downrange was not an option because the monster was flying too slowly and the craft and flight path became unstable. So now I am working on a balance of adding more fuel to the lower stage, which means reducing fuel to the upper stages to keep her light enough to git movin. It has been a challenge, but I know it is doable. A lot of good info came from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V including a schematic of the rocket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn_v_schematic.jpg I am including the retro seperators, ullage motors, escape system, and more. I am in the final stages of a proper Saturn V with stock parts and am anxious to post it soon. Its great to see what other have come up with.

two sort of physics sims for your phone: * Bad Piggies - made by the same company as Angry Birds, Novasomething (on the tip of my tongue!). This is a cartoonish game, but you do get to use parts to create a flyable and/or roadable vehicle, and gravity/physics is your challenge. Way fun. * Amazing Alex - Sort of a Rube Goldberg contraption game, using physics and gravity. Pretty cool. I have no time to play or master either, but they did get me through a few long airline flights.

Age 43, and amen to all of that!

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I get the gist of your comment, BUT, I have WAY more fun with KSP than I ever did with my erector sets, or lego's for that matter.

Ditto! (age 43 )

.... answers my question as to whether being exposed to the sun/shade has any affect. Thanks HarvesteR

Good question, I could have been more specific. My intended question had to do more with overall in-flight performance, and NOT LOAD TIMES etc. Even for me, my load times between buildings are noticeably faster by about a 10-20% margin. And before the 21.1 patch came out (while on 21.0), load times were very fast relatively. FYI, everyone, I am still using an old Core2 duo XP machine with a GeForce 260, running native resolution on a 23" monitor, 4x AA, and most everything on high quality. My new i7 machine should be here any day now

Ya buddy! They get easier and better every time. I remember how hard it seemed the first time. My biggest challenge was balancing fuel, thrust, and proper staging. Now I could do it all using my toes while sleeping . You will get there too, keep it up. Next step: Mun landing, which took me 3x as much time (at least) and effort as Kerbin orbit. ENJOY!!!!!

I have noticed a substantial performance increase with 0.21 vs. 0.20 . I have seen other comments stating that this is not the case for them. I would bet this is good to know for the developers if the majority of the users saw an increase or decrease in performance. I believe they were expecting an increase.

I started with 0.15. When was that, I cant even remember?

I just upgraded my computer, and have been in the tech biz for a LONG time. Unless you go with Linux as an OS, you are going to have a very very hard time upgrading with that budget. You problem is that it sounds like you have a pretty old system in computer years anyway. You cant just upgrade your OS (W7 or 8 will eat about half your budget) and expect it to work with your current hardware. Example: W7 & 8 (you can skip Vista) will require a second core CPU, which in your case may require a new Mobo ($$$). But then your current RAM wont fit into the new Mobo. Modern GPU's need a second power source, with new connectors on your power supply. It turns into a chain reaction as you attempt to upgrade any one of the components mentioned. Your best bet may be to go onto Ebay and find people selling your current hardware components and then looking for those selling the "next gen" of each component, like just baby steps ahead of what you have so chances are good that everything will fit and still be relatively compatible with one another. My advice to you is to keep saving your money. For a few hundred dollars more, you can get a brand new system with everything you need and is more easily upgrade able in the near future. Yesterday I bought a higher end one of these for my business: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=901728&Q=&is=REG&A=details $450 + shipping

I googled it. Basically a Mark is a "mark" in the stage of the project as stated by wikipedia: "a mark is often made to measure height or progress" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_(designation) Its just a fancy pants way of doing I, II, III, ...