Sandworm

SpaceX is certainly trying to get their rocket back in one piece, but I have doubts about them reusing the entire structure. The chances of metal fatigue or any other flaw in the tank walls is too great. There are also lots of fuel lines to purge and clean. I'm betting that they will cut the engines off and reuse them separately rather than relaunch the entire stage. At a minimum they will have to disassemble lots of stuff to repeat the standard inspections that all parts go through during assembly. SpaceX has made it to orbit despite single-engine cutouts, as did Apollo 13's launch. So the insurance people will probably insist that the first "used" engines fly alongside new ones to guard against total failure.

I was just looking at the DRE cfg linked in the DRE OP. It seems to require RealismOverhaul (ie each line contains "FOR[RealismOverhaul]"). Once upon a time I had a cfg for RSS-class heatshields that didn't reference RealismOverhaul. Before I start from scratch on another, does anyone have a link to such a cfg?

Just got bored with KSP contracts. Has anyone ever actually failed a contract? Anyway ... just played for an hour with RSS again. Damb near perfect imho. DRE, KW, FAR, RF ... everything just works as expected right out of the box. Linux_64 runs at just over 6gb without any issues. If there was ever a reason for mac/win people to make the switch, those 8192x4096 planets are it.

All stock parts, stock physics and mechjeb is allowed? That's rather limiting. I imagine all the entries for a given lift will be very similar. The real issue would be the assent profile more than the rocket design. You would have to make the lift extremely heavy to get much differentiation in entries but that leads to silly part-counts and pancake-shaped craft. Stock+KW+FAR would make for a much more diverse set of entries.

Lol, i've still got this in my mod directory, along with a note about how to change the names. Still the best skybox availible imho.

Shouldn't all the parts testing be for parts we haven't already unlocked? If the part is availible for general use then cannot we assume it's been tested to death?

You are assuming that once Squad is aware that nothing more can be done. This forum serves purposes beyond simply informing Squad of issues. Allowing people to debate issues in public both helps them feel that they are being heard and allows non-speaking observers to educate themselves on the issue. (see speakers corner). Not everyone reads these forums every day or week. A hotly debated issue should be allowed to continue for some period of time, not forever, but surely more than a couple weeks. I don't see the disruption. Nobody is forcing anyone to read these threads. The mods might have to work a little more, but that is to be expected after any update.

Telling people not to talk about something like this doesn't help. Telling people that they cannot talk now, that they have to wait for some other person to wake up or talk first, says to them that their voice is less important than that other person's. This is particularly irksome when that other person lives a very different time zone and/or work scheduled. Regardless of whether these feelings are reasonable or not, my point is that locking each and every thread or banning discussion of the issue outright will not make the problem, the anger, go away. Lock people out here and they may resort to more aggressive and disruptive means: Twitter, reddit or emails to the developers directly. Anyone tired of listening to this debate remains free not to read the associated threads.

Not 64 bit generally. 64bit windows. I and a few others are running 64bt linux without issue. That tells me there is nothing wrong with KW in regards to 64. I applaud the increased realism. The throttle response is very well implemented. I would like to see more engines running on RCS. Some smaller RCS engines (1-10 class) and some longer 1.25 and 2.5 meter RCS tanks would be great.

Well, the decision to go with opt-out rather than opt-in is always a little sneaky. The decision is made because developers know that many people will participate in an opt-out program who, if asked directly, would not. The principal is the same whether the software is an appstore app, Facebook privacy setting, or a KSP mod. -snip-

It does send a list, but that list is "anonymized" and so is not available to mod creators to fix a particular user's problem. It may answer questions such as "does my mod really not work with mac?" but cannot help with "why did this machine crash today?" To get to that question users would have to forward their unique identifiers (in the config file) and Majir would provide mod maintainers with the raw reports. That's too awkward an approach to be useful. As it is of little use for support, I'm not sure why it lists all mods used rather than only participating mods. I suspect it is attempting to answer the question "Which are the most used mods?", a question beyond simple download counts. I hesitate to speculate as to how mod creators might use such data. In my toying around with this mod I have figured out various ways to defeat/jam it with false data. Anyone with a little skill could totally disrupt Majir's efforts. A simple packet player would do. I am a little surprised that this hasn't happened already given the anger surrounding the issue.

It may not break rules, but Squad should seriously talk to their legal counsel about this. By allowing mods, by allowing and distributing this specific mod, they may be taking the mod creator on as a partner/subcontractor/Biz associate in regards to PII. Squad may be on the hook for collections by this mod regardless of what is written in tos/eulas. This sort of question can only be answered by actual lawyers in person.

I've spent the last hour or so looking at Modstatistics' traffic via wireshark. It does look innocuous from a data-privacy perspective, other than the fact you are playing KSP at a particular time/place. Nevertheless, it does transmit device information in the clear. That's a security red flag in my biz. The disabled=true seems to work atm. I see no traffic when set, but that may change with future updates. I may spend some time this week actually attacking the service (replying malformed packets etc) to look for holes.

You are conflating trademark and patent law with copyright. Derivative works (copyright) must take from the original. Confusion and/or similar operation or function are not copyright violations. Those are patent/trademark issues, neither of which protect in this circumstance.

Ar startup, which version number does KSPAPIE look for? I ask because I am getting an error notice saying that KSAPI is incompatible with ".24". I suspect the issue may be that Squad uses different version numbers depending on OS (linux gets a truncated ".24" rather the full/true version number).

I suggest taking many of these arguments offline. Most western countries have privacy agencies/ombudsmen better equipped to handle complaints surrounding the collection of personal information. They know exactly what the obligations are for those collecting PII and are able to directly enforce those requirements. You need not attack the organization/individual personally.

That's a bit of an overstatement. But I would say that by collecting information about people/users modstatistics can run into all sorts of privacy laws regarding PII. Canada's PIPEDA? Massachusetts' Data Protection Act? Even if someone doesn't believe they are collecting PII, you have to look at each and every jurisdiction from which you collect informations. Is it worth the risk?

Because we are all running a dozen+ mods. At least one or two will update each day. Inspecting each every time they update takes valuable time away from playing KSP. Not everyone has coding skill and even those who think they do aren't going to spot everything. In a way, yes. My secure network keeps track of all outbound connections. It spotted this mod. I whitelisted the domain initially, but thought twice once I realized the fingerprinting power of this mod. In short: things like this should be opt-in.

I'm in the same boat. One look at the Squad parts and I was searching for this thread again. I forgot how many stock parts I deleted from my last install. That massive decoupler is just wrong. To use an animation comparison, Squad's textures are The Simpsons a la 1995. These are Archer 2014.

Worse yet, there are very few possible modifications available even if you bother creating a plugin. Orbital inclination, multiple parts, prerequisite missions, resource limits (- and +) ... basically everything that the MissionController mods did cannot be done in the stock system. Take all the missions packs written for that mod. None of them can be fully implemented. One really wonders how anyone would bother coding everything just to alter the altitude and speed for testing a mainsail in eve's atmosphere. This is basically all we have: Take part X to location Y and press the button. And ... rescue idiot astro orbiting at a perfect 90* a convenient 100km above kerbin. And dock something. That's it. Three mission profiles modified by less than a handful of variables. ("plant flag" = take part X (kerbal) to location Y and press button.)

It's working for me (.24 linux64). Seems to be playing nice with IR and a dozen or so other basics. Waiting on a decent parts mod to come out ... stock parts are so ugly.

Test a mainsail while LANDED on Mun.

I thought they said that contracts could be easily moded, "five types" and all that. I just ran grep looking for any of the relevant text or variables and couldn't find them in plaintext anywhere.

Try logging out and logging in again. I had cookie issues but that fixed it for me.

Anyone find where the various contracts are defined? I'm far more interested in drafting a series of custom contracts.