JumpsterG

I think the key to the system they use now is that kerbals automatically stop all rotation whenever they can and maintain an "UP" direction, which does keep things from getting overly confusing. I don't have too hard a time with the current system (tap the thrusters, don't put the pedal down!), but I think a simple improvement would be to enable the same RCS control mode that ships have: IJKLHN keys for translation in and WASDQE keys for rotation. Allowing us to switch between the default mode and full craft controls would be good, I think.

Everyone should repeat this to themselves 3 times before commenting on feature discussion threads. I think this is pretty much why it's so simple. I feel like it is easier to mod a simple system to be more complex than the other way around. Yeah, it is the least common denominator in terms of how simple the system is, but I don't mind that being the "vanilla" experience. Advanced players WILL mod. It seems out of whack, but there's a difference between waiting on a resource to build up, and waiting on information to become available. I think this is what drove the decisions on these two similar features. A real life mars mission involving ISRU would involve either a long stay or a period for robotic miner/converters to prepare for astronaut arrival. Managing launch windows around this, or just time warping to watch the days go by from your Duna base's perspective are both kind of fun and seems authentic. Waiting to know where the good places to land are is kind of annoying and just slows down getting to the good part. [Opinion alert! Others may find satellite management fun and that it is disappointing to handwave it away. Sorry!] Agreed. The implementation leaves out some nice gameplay possibilities for players who are interested in the challenge of 100% mapping a planetary body or who fail to get the minimum inclination orbit, but should get *some* mapping information. A flyby with a scanner should give *something* also I would think. It's hard to tell when your hands are not on the controls, so I'm looking forward to trying the new version out to find out what seems to work and what doesn't.

CapCom: Bobfrey, the rescue ship has touched down 500 meters from your location. Make preparations for EVA and place all systems on standby. Bobfrey: Negative. CC: Repeat that last? Bobfrey: I'm not coming out. CC: Is there a malfunction? Bobfrey: Your mom had a malfunction. CC: ... Is there a reason you are not leaving the capsule? Bobfrey: I'm angry as heck and I'm not gonna take it any more. I've been stranded up here for a month and I'm not taking any more orders from you or anyone else. CC: Mission control would like to extend a formal apology for the delay of the rescue. The KSP coordinator would like to add that he was busy with the "helicopter-made-of-Kerbals" program, and that plans to return you from Minmus' surface were the absolute second priority. *knocking on the capsule door* Kenmore: Bobfrey? Capcom says you won't come out. Bobfrey: Darn right, I won't come out. Don't you know how nice it is to be stranded here? Kenmore: It's alright Bobfrey, you can come home with me. There's a free seat in my rocket. You just have to come out. Bobfrey: No. Kenmore: I have extra snacks. Bobfrey: No! Kenmore: Come on out, you stubborn... Bobfrey: You can't make me! ... Several minutes later Kenmore: Capcom, he won't come out... I'm using the KLAW.

"What, are you kidding me...? Our nuclear engines have been venting oxidizer ALL THIS TIME?! Nuclear engines don't work that way! Didn't ANYONE find this weird??? I'm rewriting the LV-N engine to never open the oxidizer valve again (WHY DOES IT HAVE AN OXIDIZER VALVE) and if my boss complains... I'm taking the next launch to Eve." -Another grumpy intern back at KSC The game might not convert parts already in the persistence file, which would leave you with operating LV-Ns that still consume both resources. Either way, I'd think you'd still want to fiddle with the save, and choose whether to "grandfather" the old LV-Ns to remain LF/O engines and maybe tweaking them to make sure they are not more efficient than the newer, shinier versions OR adjusting them to match the new stats as per our grumpy intern's revelation. I am also concerned with how fuel tanks will work for LV-Ns. Removing oxidizer from a standard LF/O tank is removing (what used to be) reaction mass without reducing dry weight. Though, the engine has likely been rebalanced in terms of ISP, so it's hard to tell just how big a deal this is. Re-purposing aircraft tanks (LF only) may be reasonable for more efficient designs... Looking forward to testing.

I don't see that solution being easily implemented, but yes, that would solve the resupply problem nicely. The funds leaking from regular payouts (and launching the automated resupplies) is still a big issue though, requiring numerous contract fulfillments near kerbin to fund deeper exploration. I suppose this counts as progression in a way, but it just feels like grinding to me. Truth be told, a simple difficulty slider (yet again) would allow players to choose just how grindy they want it and would allow this feature to work. I will grant you that. The management/tycoon game elements are lacking and I'd like to see them implemented in a good way. I guess I'm afraid to let career mode become Kerbal "Low-Orbit, Mun, and Minmus" Program. Interplanetary activities are already difficult for beginning (and some intermediate) players. Making players split their attention away from any interplanetary mission to do more Kerbin system stuff just sounds like it would suck the fun away. I believe there are solutions to this problem. An infrastructure system to generate revenue streams, automated resupply missions, life support that allows for "when-you-feel-like-it" resupply missions (roverdude has an interesting mod that will be released after 1.0 like this). Whatever is done to bring more management to the game, the systems need to be fully fleshed out and not just impose a regular funds sink or hard penalty for neglecting flights in progress.

Have any of you done a mission to Eeloo or Jool lately? You realize it takes months and years of in-game time. If your life support on a station or funds will run out after time warping only a month, you're going to be spending a LOT of time doing mini-missions around Kerbin. After the 4th or 5th identical resupply mission in a row, wouldn't you get tired of it? A Kerbal Alarm Clock system would make it manageable, but these systems turn the game into a hamster wheel, grinding funds and lifting supplies repeatedly instead of doing missions you want to do.

A countdown doesn't have to be annoying... Just launch before it reaches zero and listen to mission control panic. Haven't heard any mention of it, but more kerbal chatter throughout the game would be welcome.

*gasp* I want a lava planet

Yay! Cool stuff! Creating efficient procedures for flying the DunaDogs seems like a trick. It might well be that turns greater than some amount of degrees would be more efficiently done by landing, turning around in rover mode, then lifting off again. It would be cool to see how fuel consumption differs between burning the engines during a long, banking turn (say 90 degrees) and a landing/takeoff sequence. Version 1.0 is coming! I'm no miracle worker, but I'm willing to devote time again to keep the save for this series compatible. Brotoro, once you've gotten the new version, feel free to PM me.

Version 1.0 is hitting virtual shelves. Absolutely no difference from previous updates except that the "Early Access" tag will be removed this time. Devs will continue updating the game after this release as well.

My friends and family have been warned...

Bah! Humbug. Shifting bits to do math... It's a readability nightmare! (Dat efficiency, tho) Sadly, I'm not dedicated enough to sit and figure what math function this is (brain is busy doing work things), so no cookie for me.

Give yourself a good month or two to learn the basics of C#, following a book or set of tutorials: Syntax, variables, scope, arrays, functions, classes, modules. When you feel comfortable, dive right into a project (a reasonable, small-in-scope, personal project). You'll learn a lot more when you are searching for something you NEED to make your project work. After a few small projects, you'll know what you're capable of on your own. Check out these videos. They're not tutorials or anything, but they should get you in the right mindset for starting an early project: At any point, feel free to use this forum and others as a resource. Programmers are very forthcoming with solutions to problems they have dealt with before!

Yay! While the repurposing of this tank didn't bother me much, I love the idea of having a bunch of different versions of it. Will download prior to next play session. Does anyone have a set of quick instructions on how to go about editing the textures for this?

Gotcha. Thankfully, the devs are coming around on some of these things. It's not healthy to stick hard and fast to design guidelines. That closes you off from strategies that might work better, even if they're dissimilar to what you were planning to do. - - - Updated - - - See, that's the kind of discussion that should be happening. Finding the compromise between information overload and blind guessing would allow the devs to keep their notion of keeping things simple. I also like how you hit on an idea for a new mechanic, too (maybe unintentionally). Adding parts to your rocket in order to get specific in-flight readouts might be an ok compromise. Though, I'd personally still embed KER into my pods so I don't have to dangle bits all over my ships.

I agree with you. My opinion is that there's a lot of number crunching that is extremely useful and cool that can be done by the game and displayed, just as KER does it. On the subject of the #lolsplosions crowd; I haven't really witnessed it here on the forums. Maybe I've come to avoid certain kinds of threads instinctively and have just missed some juicy arguments. Other than some support for Harvester's initial stance of "numbers would complicate the simple process of building with parts", I haven't seen any "vehement opposition" to information being made available.

This deserves its own discussion (and probably has one already). Tracking what the player has done over the course of their persistent save would be really neat. A simple timeline of notable events: flags planted, contracts completed/failed (with amounts of funds/rep/science earned/lost), kerbals killed in action, SOI transitions, landings and crash-landings; would be great.

Can flags be set as debris in the tracking center selection UI thingy? If possible, you could do the same thing. I feel like it is not, or someone would have pointed it out. I'd check it out real quick, but KSP is not at hand.

Agreed. If this mod uses them, that'll be handy since there are so few uses for skills. But if not, nothing will really be missing.

Huh. Now that you mention it, I have never touched a flag once it was placed... Is it really possible to dislodge flags by hitting them? I want to test this now... P.S. Agreed, remove them from the count of active flights, please. Non-critical, which is why it's been ignored, but mildly annoying.

I've known about this limitation for a while and just realized that I'd been taking for granted that it is not fixable. I wonder if there's any way this could be smoothed out by the developers? Admittedly I haven't searched the forum for other discussions on this issue, so maybe it's already been hammered on.

Makes even more sense when you say it that way. Sounds like a very fun concept that will also take care of the exploits that have been suggested. As you say, with the death setting, this would create some uncertainty as to exactly how long the kerbals can keep themselves alive. Cutting it close never felt so good. Kerbal engineers could be awesome at re-purposing stuff, but since players should be actively avoiding out-of-supply scenarios, I don't think kerbal skills are necessary to tie into the mechanic. No reason not to, if it's easy to do, though.

Want. Failure would be hilarious. Probably not going to happen, I don't think I've seen any mods add props to IVA kerbals and a dependency on texture replacer (if it could even be used for this purpose) is too big a requirement for such a small feature. We can imagine it at least. Party music playing, might be doable... *hope*

This is the first I've heard of this, but it makes sense that a monetization method is finally being introduced. I don't have any proof, but I've heard it said many times that Google has been operating Youtube at a loss since it started operating it. The proposed system looks pretty tame, honestly. Nothing changes except for a pay-in for new features (ad-free service and podcast style downloads) and a way for uploaders to separate content between subscription and non-subscription videos. I feel that uploaders would be shooting themselves in the foot to lock up their content behind a pay wall they don't control, so I don't anticipate any big fallout from these changes. Edit: Just caught that bit about uploaders being required to participate or else video uploads are private only. That could be bad...

Well, my go to example has been: I want to do an Eeloo and back mission, but I have a space station full of kerbals to feed in orbit around Kerbin. If the station is not 100% self-sufficient, that means supply runs are needed (probably a lot of them). With strict death-upon-starvation mechanics, I cannot timewarp through the Eeloo mission without either letting my station kerbals die, or stopping multiple times during the Eeloo mission to spend 15-30 minutes of my playtime doing repetitive supply missions. All this said, you might say, why bother with Life Support at all? Two reasons: 1) I want the design challenge of bringing enough supplies or a robust life support system on my missions. A ship needs to be able to handle the long trip; opening up fun possibilities like ISRU or sending extra supplies ahead of time. 2) I want to do resupply missions, really! Just not when my attention is on a different project, and certainly not 20 times in a row while I'm waiting for a ship to transfer to Eeloo. Finally, kerbals not dying opens up more options to the player. If they've gone all the way out to the outer reaches of the solar system and run out of supplies... It might be easier to write them off rather than launch a difficult rescue; but the rescue is an option you wouldn't otherwise have.