Kegereneku

Of course, but basically it's more parts, and for now we are waiting for the 64bits update that would make much easier to add them. Myself I'm also waiting for them to redo completely the Tech-Tree into something that actually serve gameplay. [/snarky snarkiness]

The position relative must be locked but the cargo mass must be taken into account to create a new center of mass. It could make the idea much more tricky.

Sorry, but that's a very bad idea. The Aerospike isn't an overpowered engine, at least it doesn't have to be if its stat were balanced correctly. And even if it were, it would be a FUTURE engine, with logical improvement. The whole point of their radically different design is to keep more thrust at any pressure, making them ideal for SSTO rocket or spaceplane. If the stats reflected that, they wouldn't be underpowered Bell-engine or overpowered Bell-engine. So in my opinion we will need more Aerospike for all size.

As said by some other people here, this isn't so much a question of realism than game balance and having a non-insulting/non-trolling logic. What is the point of choosing which tech-bundle to unlock if in the end you have to unlock 3, 5 or more for 90% of the parts to have any point ? And how are you supposed to learn good rocket-design if the lack of some dumb-as-hell part like the Ladder keep you from making a sound design ? The realism isn't a goal, it would be an after effect of a more rational game-progression. Starting, or a least having the choice of starting with unmanned spacecraft would give the opportunity to train with cheap probes before killing Kerbals. And the player having the ability to spend RP/money precisely on the technology we need would make our choice matter. That's all I have to say on this.

At the point we are, I think nothing but a complete remake of the Tech-tree is necessary. You are not encouraged to do any preparation or logical choice based on your need, you are just grinding for bunch of part with maybe one or two part that are useful. They might as well unlock surprise bundle each time we have enough science. [/snark]

There a confusion here, I didn't meant to say that ONLY military transport used it (they have the same operational requirement than civil aircraft and are using the sames type of engine), but that amongst military airplane they were of the only one. (Because as you point out the reason the reverser was counter-productive for Carrier-based fighter).

Some Air-fighter had reverse when it fit their operational requirement. But the one based on Aircraft-Carrier need to stay able to abort and put full thrust and they can already take off on way shorter distance anyway. So (edit : amongst military aircraft) only transport really use the technology. Jump-jet like the F-35 is something else obviously. For KSP I'm not really interested in a thrust reverser but I would sure love a jet-engine made specifically for VTOL and quick thrust variation.

+1 for another correctly tuned implementation that I would have preferred to see done before 1.0. The mission filtering definitely need to be worked on. Rant aside, I think the following three aspect have to be balanced hand-in-hand, like a three-legged race. - Contract - Administration - Tech-Tree I have nothing to add for Contract, the mission plan proposed by OP's is quite sound or will adapt in a good fashion. Administration don't have to change much (unless SQUAD go crazy and implement a periodic Budget), but it have to be rebalanced with the contract new value in mind. The Tech-tree is the one who need the most change and will provoke the more variation. The cost of a mission have to reflect the cost of the parts required to accomplish it, plus a little leeway to research/upgrade.

I don't mind the NERF over all part, I understand it. But I'm still surprised with the Aerospike stats. The whole point of the aerospike design is that unlike bell-nozzle its thrust increase with altitude, making it ideal for SSTO rocket. But right now its is the opposite and the only distinction with a bell-nozzle design is that it has a better ISP in vacuum, making it a orbital engine that can't stack rather than an engine good for SSTO.

How many time did I wondered myself... I think the subtlety is that the separators would have to also check the diameter of the "node" before the engine (and overide the previous size), the engine obviously already contain the data saying that it is a 1.25m or a 2.5m part, but I doubt every other fuel tank do. Only work-around I know (since 1.0) is to add a fairing hiding the decoupler.

I've read a little your discussion. I won't take part. Just saying I also find unbalanced that a 2 seat capsules is heavier than 2 one seat capsules as it fail its basic functionality : carry kerbal, while being light. Anyway... we did knew SQUAD rushed to 1.0, let's hope they remember to do a balance pass next time.

I am saying WHAT you are hauling to space for WHOM is meaningless in our context. What matter are the "resources" (reputation/funds/science) and how it interface with the means (Expandable versus Reusable). The idea of influencing what contract you want it to give you, rather than how they play out for you, is to me a bad idea. Hence I consider we are in fact better using the Administration Facility EXACTLY as it was formulated, with the commitment slider (a very good idea), but with its value rebalanced (along the contracts & hopefully the Tech-tree) so you are actually interested in investing in a strategy, building your spaceship along your philosophy and accepting only the (non-player driven) contract that interest you.

You are worried the game won't recognize a base ? Me I'm more worried the game would consider any spacecraft that land as a self-sufficient base. However you got me to realize I considered the thing in a mission-centric way, aka "the game recognize there is a base because they asked you to put one". Which is not ideal since player will do whatever they want as long as they can. The flag would make a good milestone... but you still have the same absurdity of tourist asking -like seriously- to go on a planet minutes after the WORLD FIRST ! ... cheap tour bus it is. Mankind put a flag on the Moon but the only place we can even space tourist seat is LEO. We can try to consider the problem from another angle : The tourist only selling point should be the prestige, you should be encouraged to squeeze them in the cheapest spacecraft possible in the hope of breaking even. But before that, the contract generator have to recognize what became simple for you. (right now I'm considering basing this on deltaV map : Tourist would only appear for stuff that require say 1/10th of the theoretical dV of your last feat) (Answering late I know) I can't say I support your.... Total Conversion. But that's mostly because if I really hoped for such thing I would do so in a completely different manner. (In all due respect, National/Commercial/Tourism are pointless distinction, I know what inspire you, but there is no point in doing so. National agency do commercial service and tourism just as well a commercial company can do "national stuff") If you are still interested by what (my) TC would be in short : - (short)Periodic Budget appear, reputation set the max you can get, it feed on reputation. - All reward are made so looooow you need 50% budget 50% contract/mission to not stagnate. Contract become punitive. - The Administration facility stay globally the same. The strategy given would be good if they were properly balanced and working with the rest. - In the contract(AND mission) screen however "company-flag" are replaced by Icon indicating the type of non-discriminate mission. (Any Survey for example would have the same "flag/icon" ) That's all.

TinfoilChef, I think your issue is more closely related to the Tech-Tree (horrible) state than the contract. Though both should ideally work together. I'll not go in length about it here, but because of it contract can't rely on you to even consider privileging a technology to fit the contract. You either have the part already or you are grinding any contract/science you can to get a bundle that look correct.

Thank you. A few years ago you could pay to spend a few day on the ISS. But amongst all reason it's not done often. - Its like, very costly. (20 - 40 millions the seat, it doesn't pay the rocket) - It require a technology that work (we are too used to reverting to VAB). - It monopolize valuable resources. (The spaceship, the fuel, the Life-support, the mission control, YOU) - Then it take a LOT of time to go beyond the Moon. (So many would say they shouldn't be tourist as so much as pioneer) In the above a lot of card KSP can't play on (not that I want Life-support). Yet it would still be great for your space program to not feel like a cheap bus tour. I'm pretty sure the first person to land on Mars will not be a rich investor, not even if Elon Musk became a astronaut at (his) SpaceX And I seriously doubt we will ever send tourist to place we don't have PERMANENT base at or on years long mission. Else, I invite you to read the points above. If the solution was left to me... - Tourist mission don't appear until you have a Permanent Station in some place (Orbit AND Surface) - They are first replaced by mission asking you / giving you the opportunity to replace Astronaut already sent there. (we pay for each one remember) - Tourist would NOT pay enough to funds the mission, but give a LOT of reputation (meant for Reputation based-strategy or Recovering strategy) Hence the main use of tourist in your space program would be on destination you have already made efficient mean of transportation for, and to resupply in Reputation.

64bits is pretty much a technical obligation. Even if KSP isn't that pretty it still have pretty particular requirement due to using much more physics calculation than a dozen AAA game run in parallel. As for what is next... Myself I'm asking them to finish what they started before improving. So : - An actual Tech-Tree, not the horrible clusterf*ck we will have to mods. - A rebalance of the Contract to avoid generating upside-down rocket level objective. Not because it's not Kerbal, but because its feel like a cheap way to generate fake content - Major rebalance of Administration facility and all around reward/cost. (I would suggest some periodic Reputation-based budget) (I'm feeling very snarky today, I excuse myself for unwarranted bluntness)

I can totally understand OP's fear.(edit: even if I don't share it) I myself went from Orbiter to KSP because I know that Realism isn't everything. However KSP stayed pretty vanilla and didn't for example, jumped in the gameplay horror that RSS and Realfuel would be for anyone but a bunch of people. The new aerodynamic model is actually meant to serve gameplay and fun more than the old one. ReentryHeating can be deactivated but is meant to give new toy to play with. The only problem is that SQUAD rushed the release, so I think many of us are worried we will not anymore have major bugfix, major rebalance, new mechanic, lot of new parts, a good tech-tree, non-random contract or eventually a new planet. (plus SQUAD will be first quite busy porting on UNITY 5 for 64bits compatibility)

+1 Anything to make Tourist contract less numerous.

The criticism have nothing to do with historical reenactment, although it is an important facet of technological progression. It still took around 50 more flights before getting from Mercury to the 11th Apollo moon-landing mission, and none were tourist. And remember that because we don't know better than starting manned we are shortening around 50 flight to 10 flights. No one will say you have to impose arbitrary number of flight nor forbid player from landing on the moon as soon as they can. But the current contract make it look like a RPG game were you are asked to (definitely) defeat the first boss during the training phase. Whereas in a well-designed, non-rushed progression you would fight (inconspicuous) custom-made mook to learning the fundamental, then have a dramatic showdown with the boss. Analogy aside, There is nothing wrong with tricking rich tourist to fund the technology to make a long Duna mission possible. But there is nothing logical in being asked to actually put tourist on the surface, minute after you first did it, even with the best reputation in the world. Topping on this is a balance problem. Should tourist even be able to make those missions economic before technology improve ? Shouldn't reputation play at much more important roles to make tourism play this card ? Right now the current contract balance make failure pretty much inconsequential, and contract have to pay extremely well to compensate for their complete lack of coherence. If someone say it help new player, I say "so would infinite money" but it wouldn't make Career-mode any more interesting. All in all, we are only asking for more rationality in the way the contract are generated. Not historical-reenactment or preventing you from getting paid for something you wanted to do anyway, but something that make rocket-science look something incredible AND logical (looking at part testing here). The Kerbals may be space-nuts, have little self-preservation and be very very forgetful about security, but in my mind they aren't stupid.

That problem come at every difficulty. The good news is that KSP do have all the framework to make it work well. My own suggestion to 'fix' the Contract System : - Filter impossible / absurd mission, "This is Kerbal" don't make a mission to test equipment/send tourist in frustratingly incoherent way more "fun". (or a least make it the exception, like a Seat + Booster, test mission) - Prevent the suggestion of WORLD FIRST ! through cheap contract. - STOP using all parameter ! What fun is there at knowing you missed to test X part because of one pointless parameters. (Sub idea : make part testing 'program' with several test consecutively for the same part) - Make the contract HELP new player by suggesting them rational use of their parts, ex : testing a high ISP engine in space, or fins in atmosphere. - Have the contract suggest you experiment you haven't done yet. The goal is that even if you wasted funds by doing only one experiments each time, you would still stay just afloat. - Rebalance entirely the Administration Facility, so (1) it's strategy are worth it (2) it work in synergy with the contract system. At some point SQUAD might want to look into Periodic Budget. I see it work well with Contract for the following reason : - It's so failsafe the contract can be made punitive in return. - If based on reputation it can give it a whole new importance. - It could allow make time matter.

I actually hope they make save-breaking change... I will not stand the Tech-tree in career mods.

I gave it a few chances, especially it's supposedly 1.0 version. Don't get it wrong. The gameplay, the parts, the building upgrade, the whole framework is awesome. But Career mode is about 90% of good ideas... made utterly pointless by 10% of idea so horrible or flaws not solved before 1.0 release. 1) The tech-tree is horrible, all forced grind, no actual choice. It seem to be built so as to make choice the most pointless possible. It is as if they purposely separated every inter-dependent parts so as to make them the least useful possible at any point of the game. The only rational reasoning I can find behind that design would be that the common-player was deemed too stupid to invest on the right technology and had to specifically be prevented from making choice and made to grind everything equally. Mods put aside, more intuitive rework of what we have now have been suggested since before 0.90. We know they have to manage their time, make choice and face forum-outburst. But frankly, I can't believe they couldn't have done better than this on the first try, they must have really been short on time or the development process went wrong that day. Result : This is "1.0" and yet they have to rework it entirely. Breaking savegame is a necessity here. 2) The (good) contract system is still generating 80% of ........ & NOT helping the new-player with rational mission. You would think SQUAD would at least filter the impossible combination (testing Stability Enhancer in orbit and the like), let alone have a system that check where you haven't gathered science and make mission there to help you. But so far you have to test ridiculous stuff in precisely ridiculous way, launch stuff for absurd reason and overall in the most grindy, non-dramatic way. The only redeeming thing is that they do actually have all the framework to make it into something awesome, this is better than game that could only be bad because the framework was bad. 3) The Administration facility current balance is pointless. Before, we knew there was one strategy overpowered and that recovering rocket first stage was pretty much impossible. Right now, there is no point in using ANY strategy. Sacrificing 50% of a resources give you like 1% of another. GREAT DEAL. Some MAJOR rebalance is in order. A fail-safe Government-Budget would be great too, I foresee it improving contract dynamic. Even if I had discovered and bought KSP today, those 3 points would still be a problem (plus my current signature). On the other hand, there's a few thing I'm happy they left out. Like "Kerbal Construction Time" linked above.

Personally I would be glad to show the quantity in term of mass. I think it would make it easier to estimate fuel/range ratio intuitively. But anyway we should have a stock DeltaV reader (see signature), which would naturally become your main tools for mission planning and navigation.

Well, it doesn't matter in game-design but realistically, fuel and oxidizer in rocket are not needed in the same quantity. From a gameplay perspective of course you could do 1:1 just as well as you could do an absurd 1:22 ratio and justify it however you want. You might hear some persons here claiming that respect of real-world density, fuel ratio, fuel name, planet size, atmosphere size, reaction-wheel saturation/lock...etc is paramount to KSP "fun". But as far I'm concerned this is a way for the Developer to emulate the "real world" disparity while balancing mass in Spaceplane design. btw, I think it would be better to show the LF/O with unit of mass.

KSK, ObsessedwithKSP & regex. I think you are being obtuse if you don't understanding Aanker point. The realism of the new aero have little to do with the problem. All in all, KSP's goal isn't to be realist, it is to look realist yet keep design balanced. But as we all know Aesthetic has always been a big part of KSP and attempting to do so with 1.0.2 is now trickier/impossible. Hence the problem. Yes, this spaceplane should fly if it was only for the appearance and not the way KSP simulate things. Cross-section is too big you say ? What I see is a cross-section smaller than a Skylon surrounded not by "BOX" but by streamlined INTAKE, realistically one would assume this spaceplane to be faster than other, in the game one would expect the needless Intake to -at least- not create so much drag, yet apparently they does. The way I see it Aanker, Roflcopterkklol, Allmhuran and other did not complain that KSP 1.0/1.0.2 weren't realistic because they doesn't allow their aesthetic design. They argued that the way KSP 1.0.2 simulate things now is much more finicky on what can fly without it being justified by realism. The X-Wing and other 'bad' design were meant to show you can fly ridiculous contraption to orbit, but not design who were made streamlined using wing-part. (sorry for all the repetitions, I wish to keep it clear) Personal opinion on this : I actually think this is a good news that you cannot easily exploit the system to make anything fly, giving the requested challenge/balance. (Now if only the Tech-tree didn't ....ed this up...) But to retrieve the Aesthetic-aspect we LOST, something need to be done (drag-less structural parts/tweak...etc). And that's why people complain, not because "they don't know how to fly/design in a REALISTIC model". Especially since mindless realism don't make a game nor a simulator good. I see what you mean, I guess I should have been more explicit that I think your suggestion will lead to unmanageable "unexpected consequences". We are not actual Rocket-scientist, so the more complex you make a game-mechanic, the more likely it is going to be broken or exploited. This is why realism-in-the-process isn't the best solution to obtain the illusion of realism. If you are talking of simple failsafe parts purely meant for aesthetic, I agree with you. But many on this forum (as one of the post above mine) would imply/claim that with procedural-wing and an even more complex aerodynamic everything would be easier/better. Hence my remark. I do also hope SQUAD start mass producing parts (and a real tech-tree to go along) once UNITY get upgraded.