Decho

Likewise, though it should also be noted that for me, all those people who've given up think the game is fantastic, they just can't get their heads round it. But then if tutorials were too explicit, allowing people to progress, much of the fun of learning what to do would be lost.

Same here pretty much. Only game I've ever played more was Halo 3 (about 3500 hours total, 3000 hours in multiplayer games), but that was 4x more expensive and required me to pay xbox live for three years, and expansion/map packs too, so was actually more like £200, making the cost per hour waaay higher than KSP.

I have no issue with the LV-1 itself, though the fact that it's cost is higher than 48-7S makes no sense to me whatsoever.

If you're talking about the Voyager launches in particular it is worth bearing in mind that the Star-37E solid booster was also used (after the Centaur stage), though it is often not listed as it was considered part of the payload despite being separate from the Voyager craft. Also have an approximate C3 curve for the Titan-3E (including Centaur and Star-37E), probably not useful but graphs make me feel better.

Standard. Pulling up and pushing down is deeply ingrained into my expectations of controls; I always have to put gamepad sticks on 'inverted' so that it remains true there as well.

After about two dozen launches I'm at about 3.5million funds. I'm not really seeing it as a budget thing really though, more of a score.

Depending on how the difficulty turns out I'm planning on doing some 'grind' missions to get the funds together for a really big 'dare' mission.

I'd prefer a contract that requires you to put a satellite up with a certain set of parts required: comms dish, continual power for the dish etc. Pre-made ones could still be cool, but should be rarer (and preferably they'd be really unhelpfully shaped to make it challenging).

1. No quick save/loading/reverts except for test-flights and bugs (as the idea of building a rocket without simulating it ever is completely insane, all test flights to be unmanned (as soon as I put Kerbals in it's a proper launch with no reverts)) 2. No more than 3 stages to reach orbit, where the 3rd stage must bring the periapsis up to 10-15km (this may be relaxed for really huge launches, but even then there's no extensive asparagus staging) 3. No mods until I've completed the tech tree and gone to most of the planets (this may be relaxed to allow for procedural fairings if the cost of parts to build stock fairings is prohibitive) 4. No space debris with periapsis outside the atmosphere (if it won't get down to auto-deletion altitude then I'll manually end it as it would eventually come down if I sat and watched it) 5. Complete entire tech tree tier before progressing to the next 6. At least 2 unmanned missions to precede a manned one if heading further out than Kerbin's SOI 7. No nukes (engines or RTGs) until I hit max reputation and finally get the environmentalists to back down (this is mainly to make interplanetary harder, though if rep goes up really quickly it might be meaningless) 8. ????? 9. Profit!

Hm, this is a nice part, and I didn't previously know about that engine, thanks! I'll give this a try at some point.

What NASA uses: http://gmat.gsfc.nasa.gov/ I've been using it for parts of my MSc (Uranus transfer orbits specifically)

I don't subject mine to anything more than 3Gs, preferably 2 or less. Generally haven't had a problem doing this.

A delta V readout not being in the stock game is something I really don't understand. Also a peri & apoapsis (and maybe radar altitude) while in standard flight mode would make tremendous sense, as with those the information is already available, just fiddly to access.

That's actually something I've wanted for ages and achieving it through tweakables would be amazing.

If you want to go further than that then Vallado is the ultimate tome (and as far as I've come across pretty much the industry standard), see here: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Fundamentals_of_Astrodynamics_and_Applic.html?id=PJLlWzMBKjkC&redir_esc=y Good luck getting one cheap though. As for KSP I don't do much maths, just first order trajectory stuff to get me going roughly the right way, and delta v calculations for payloads if they're going a long way.

I'm planning to use it to put landing legs on asteroids and then use them as super-heavy landers.

I tend to use an informal engineering pipeline for my main designs, so they're pretty reliable. Bespoke launchers for odd payloads tend to be a bit flakier, but most have better than 1 in 5 failure rates.

I only use LV-Ns on non-disposable ships, and when they reach end of life they're left in graveyard orbits.

I use the LV-N for most interplanetary burns, except for probes where I typically use the ickle Rockomax engine. I never fire LV-Ns withinan atmosphere though, and I also avoid firing them within 120km of Kerbin and 10km of manned units when pointing engine towards them (180degrees, also means I can't have LV-Ns in front of any manned parts of a ship).

'At least I set up an abort system' - shortly before the abort system malfunctions and fires the command pod back through the rest of the ship, ripping off the parachutes.

Basically everything I build has been capable of making orbit, most of my failures have only had the problems appear once up there when I begin checking things.

I'd be interested if anyone wants to do a demo of one in use with KSP. I doubt I'd be getting one soon as I just got a new (and distressingly expensive) keyboard, but it does interest me, and I do a little 3D modelling so I'd probably use one for that as well.

I build everything to get destroyed or lost to the depths of deep space on missions (except the crew return module), so as not to clutter things up.

What I do now is put the science equipment on the bottom of the lander, take the data up into the pod via eva, and then leave it all behind on the surface. That way I can make it look nice and I'm not carrying pointless mass back to orbit.

I plan to carry on sharpening up my C# skills until it hits Today could be a very long day.