Kodiak42

So, is this thing compatible with 0.24?

I'm not sure if it does this for all parts, but when I grab a parachute, my Kerbal flies off in such a way where he is unresponsive, the ship is often damaged, and the fate of the parachute remains unknown. Parachutes were causing serious handling problems before the update, but they weren't game breaking under intended use.

Bring your pet space rock(s) home with a bunch of parachutes. Or you could walk your pet space rock(s) around the Kerbolar System.

The Blue Danube (with explosions courtesy of Monty Python)

Although they may be more expensive to build, they're much cheaper because hardware is only purchased once. However, as opposed to staging setup with 100% hardware recovery, the advantage might just be that you can land somewhere, refuel, take off, find some other celestial body, repeat for as many celestial bodies as desired. For now, in reality, 100% hardware recovery staging is better, but once we start building refueling stations on the Moon, Mars, even Titan, THEN the advantage will be with the SSTO.

Hmm... I wouldn't save that if I were you, Jeb might have managed to do that with the power of the Kracken

You do realize how unimaginably empty space is right? Really, the average human mind is psychologically incapable of fully imagining how little there is in space. You see that little dot out in the distance, no, that's a speck on the camera, the smaller one, the one that looks like a dead pixel among this star-field, that's a colored-in field representing our sphere of influence, not even our planet, just our planet's sphere of influence. Keep in mind, that's a planet's sphere of influence, which dwarfs your meteor shower to a point that is just slightly unimaginable. NASA scientists aren't so concerned with random space debris because virtually all the debris they need to worry about are the trash we leave in space, the trash from a rocket that launched from the same launchpad they're reusing right now. And KSP already has that debris. Space isn't really random, but it's empty, very empty, I can't stress enough how unimaginably empty space is, because even if you could imagine how empty it was, there is nothing quite as empty to compare it to.

Ticked off people are more likely to complain than satisfied people, please keep this in mind. Quite frankly, I see the new engines as a tradeoff: You get an engine that's better on paper, but still not as versatile as the mainsail. Pointing out how this engine completely outclasses the mainsail is like pointing out how the new five meter cluster engine completely outclasses the single five meter engine. You say the stats put the new engines high above the mainsails because their numbers look better on the screen, this is true when on the launchpad, but the mainsail is still more usable as a launch-from-lander-lifter (i.e., getting off of eve, duna, laythe, tylo, or some other planet). As with the RAPIER engines, yes, they were best for SSTO's, but they were also the worst at everything else.

First I would like to start off by saying that science isn't exactly a resource that you need indefinite amounts of, and I usually have a problem with exhaustible resources, but the need for science is also exhaustible. As for experiments that take time, that's sort of what the lab does, but time warp doesn't really work with the lab. Most of our current experiments are exposures (the goo container and materials bay), logs, and samples. Logs should be instantaneous, and samples shouldn't take too long. Only exposures would make sense to have a sort of time period, I can really only see a long period exposure giving you a little bit of science over time, but would eventually be exhausted, and even the total amount would be small (relative to something like logging atmospheric data on another planet).

I imagine that we will have what we need to send a robot arm into space to do robot arm stuff in space. It's really hard to say which direction squad might take this game in. Hopefully the aerodynamic system will be upgraded, although space pancakes are funny, it's because of their absurdity. Hopefully using Ion engines won't be as boring as watching paint dry. I also imagine that what I've mentioned is only scratching the surface, I have no idea how much squad will add or how far they plan to go.

How do set-in-stone tank sizes challenge me, the things are easy enough to mix to hold any amount of fuel I need and be any size I need.

I'm not opposed to this, but you have to admit, it either won't be what people want, or it will take forever to bugfix

Faster time warp... Anyone who regularly makes interplanetary trips knows why, and a easier way to transfer fuel between craft that had landed (Let us be the first to put a gas station on the moon)

Have you made sure that it wasn't your center of lift that was in front of your center of mass? In ksp's current state, your center of drag and mass are the same, aside from slight deviations due to a few low mass parts. From what your accounts say... um... pics please... I can't think of a single craft that would do this outside of a mod.

How is science grindy? What are you talking about anyway? It's not at all grindy unless you decide to exhaust a body for science before moving on to the next. If you decide to launch a brand new craft for each tidbit of science you want, yeah, that could make the game a little grindy, but you don't need to. As for how collecting temperature data on the mun helps you unlock a mainsail, Research Grants. As for your first suggestion, do you really want to play a game that makes you pointlessly wait or a game where you unlock stuff for actually accomplishing something in your own creative way (and even if you did have to wait, science doesn't work like "it'll take this long exactly", it's "we have no idea how long this will take, hey, go see how this works, we might be onto something"). As for your second suggestion, NO! NO! NO! NO! How is random part breakage as a critical part of game progression any better than plain random breakage?! Kerbal space program is a game about knowing what you're doing, not rolling dice. As for your third suggestion, (sarcastic tone begin) Yes, because I would LOVE to try suboptimal garbage just to get further rather than visit another planet and do experiments. (sarcastic tone end) Take twenty random people and they'll know who first set foot on the moon but they won't know the technical details of how they got there. I can see you mean well, but KSP is a game, not a simulator, and the critical difference between a game and a simulator is whether realism is sacrificed for enjoyable gameplay (REGARDLESS OF THE NAME; since this is the internet, SOMEONE will come up and say "But [something something] Simulator sacrifices realism for gameplay")

My problem is that I forgot to forget the parachutes and ended up with a parachute-assisted disassembling.

I say we build a rocket factory on the moon, if we can turn moon rocks into rockets and rocket fuel, the only thing Nasa will need a budget for is Earth-work. Then, once we have our moon base, we go to Titan, and build our colony there. And then, after that, from our Titan base, we perform Randall Munroe's Oberth Kuiper Maneuver! :sticktongue:

A nice little challenge, but I have a few complaints about your guidlines Mechjeb is a very powerful autopilot, and some mods make constructing a VTOL a piece of cake compared to using stock parts. Mods used should be taken into account when scoring. Also, VTOL fuel consumption for takeoff and landing should also be factored into the score in a major way. I do have a little concern with the 20% per kerbal score addition, given that someone might just slap a couple command seats on the side to add boatloads of kerbals to the VTOL, my suggestion, some form of safety regulations. Other aircraft properties should be taken into consideration, like maneuverability, I plan on putting on an airshow with my VTOL (if I can ever get it to work in FAR) Also, Please give us at least a picture or two of your craft, It's one thing when somebody just gives us the pic of the craft on the runway and says what it did, it's a bit of another thing when the creator of the challenge didn't post any pictures of their VTOL at all. I really wanna see how you figured it out (btw, I'm using FAR and sub-assembly manager)

I was trying to dock with another space craft in orbit of Kerbol... And I had my direction right on the money, unfortunately, I was going a bit fast. I saw the distance continue to drop, I still couldn't see it very well, and then *BOOM* Both were in pieces... Why must I be so accurate?

I do agree with you on some of these parts, Kerbal space program only gives you enough numbers to eyeball your missions. Although, you can already calculate the delta-v of your spacecraft (if you can ever get the sea slugs to tell you how the numbers work out). In all honesty, though, I can't really blame mod developers for automating the process, users would either not know the calculus to perfectly plan these processes, or they would soon get annoyed at doing the same thing over and over again.

The problem you seek to solve is one with KSP's overheating, not a lack of a certain part (If you place your rocket engines onto that part, they will still feed from the fuel tank on top of that part, but they will explode very quickly from overheating.

The large problem we might have with this (assuming the math isn't too hard for squad) is that this could graphic detail could slow down the game considerably. While you could probably just "turn the effect off" , the effect must be feasible for enough users to justify squad working on it.

One of the largest problems with this idea is how terrible the game engine is at determining part clipping. You get false positives and false negatives so often that "no part clipping" just makes the task a bit easier. Although, I wouldn't mind a nice connection between overlapping wing segments (it almost seems like the game allows certain parts to clip, and it does make sense for those parts, ever try to make a good looking plane without clipping?)

Well, I read your post, had no idea what formulas you were referring to, so I looked at your website, and I had half a clue what you are talking about (I'm currently in AP call class). While there appears to be nothing wrong with your math, there is one serious side effect that might prevent this from being added to Kerbal Space Program, it means we have to worry about orbital maintenance. As you mentioned in your website, probes would have some orbital drift, which potentially means that the fuel station I sent into low Kerbal orbit might have fallen back into the atmosphere by the time I check on it after landing on Laythe. After all, Kerbal Space program is a game, not a simulator, an approximation will work if it makes the game more fun.

A precipitate that could be dispersed in the air that is capable of absorbing/refracting the laser, a whole lot of smoke, but no mirrors. No mirror is perfect enough to reflect any laser you throw at it without eventually being burned through, but the precipitate that is burned through would be continually replaced by the device emitting it. In other words, a military grade fog machine. As for space warfare, I'm guessing we'll be using mass drivers (close range or long range on unsuspecting enemies), lasers (this could be used just about everywhere), and missiles (very rarely, likely used against targets with very low mobility, as in your typical space station)