internetlad

I hope in the future they will default to the randomized system, but allow you to manually choose pilots, or possibly in career mode you can "hire" or "train" kerbals to act as pilots. It would be neat to see them all freak out and stop responding to your commands because they're scared, not unlike what happens in XCOM, and would add extra challenge to the game making sure you have 2 vet pilots stacked with a rookie to train him.

That is awesome! I've tried to build some star-wars style ships but they all come out looking retarded and never fly properly. These are above and beyond, regardless of whether they fly or not (original series SW ships look cool, but they make no physical sense) Small nitpick. I'm not a huge star wars nut or anything but i'm pretty sure the rockets for the Y wing are actually in the bomb bays, I think it just has an engine on the back of the cockpit. Maybe i'm wrong. EDIT: ermagerd Scott Manley test piloted the ships. Well deserved praise right there.

Go home, Rockomax fuel tanks, you're drunk.

I forgot how restrictive .17 was lol. The biggest issue is escaping to orbit. Once you're there a mun landing is a cakewalk. Just burn prograde at your periapsis until your orbit intersects with mun orbit, then burn retrograde when you get caught in the mun's sphere of influence. You're now orbititing the mun. From there a landing should be easy. Try to make sure you have enough fuel to get home (I'd recommend using the same method, get in mun orbit and burn until your orbit reaches kerbin.) Best of luck.

OK I'll give you that one, the exploding upon switching from ship to ship is new to .20. Son of Space Kraken. EDIT: I haven't experienced it personally as I don't switch between parts that way. I'll usually head out to the map and select the ship I want.

what i'd suggest is specifically setting up your landing site so that this does not happen. When you get caught int he mun's sphere of influence, don't go in for a landing immediately (assuming that's what you're doing). Fire your thrusters retrograde (slow down) so you orbit the moon, then orbit until the periapsis is above a well lit area, and fire retrograde again as you approach/reach your periapsis until you are heading pretty much straight down (ie 0 m/s orbit) This is how I tend to make my Mun landings, and as far as I know from my basic understanding of rocket science, it's the most fuel efficient way to land as well. Alternatively you could put lights on the bottom of your lander. EDIT: fixed some mistakes. firing prograde in mun orbit would take you back to kerbin not help you land.

I've played for several hours, made a couple rondevous and docks and the only problems i've had are because of my own incompetence. This update broke nothing for me and it fixed the most annoying issue of not being able to place multiple parts on multiple radial decouplers without having the camera angle just right. Love the update (despite the fact that very little was added in the way of stock parts) and keep it up Squad. I suspect a large portion of the userbase that's having issues are the ones using multiple mods designed for old builds that are breaking the game, and they blame the update. I go in to every update fully expecting a save file wipe and starting with the vanilla game and adding mods as they come. I always install to a new folder rather than try to "update" my old game. Until the game is in a full, stable release, that's what we get for playing an open beta as far as i'm concerned. I suspect most people don't share this view and want to carry over old save files, ship designs, mods, etc, and it ends up causing a conflict. In my opinion squad should get the game to a full, stable, vanilla release rather than try to dick around with fixing every problem that every person has because "my old save file put my base inside the moon" or "i have lag because this doesn't work with mod X v.19"

It would probably be hard to impliment as you'd have to figure out some way to cycle through parts rather than use the mouse and right click to select options, but it would be doable. As long as it's a PC game first and a console port second (how often does that happen nowadays?) i'd be fine with it.

AFAIK there's no way to depopulate a command module before launch (yet). Just EVA the kerbals and right click> control from here on the unmanned shuttle, or use the hitchiker container.

-snip- 10char

built up an extremely badly designed space station/orbital refuelling station with the new high visibility command module. I'm amazed the thing made it to a proper orbit.

Kraken egg.

have to admit, I got a chuckle out of these when I saw them in game (first thing I did was launch a poorly designed space station with the new command pod and went IVA) There was one more easter egg. Can't remember what it says specifically but if you look at the way to the right there's a note referencing how the capsule can be prone to explosions. I think it's a reference to how everything in the game violently explodes despite the fact that it's a wheel or girder

i still prefer the rounded brown ones. I don't really see why you would use these as grip doesn't seem to be an issue in KSP. Apart from looking cool they don't seem to have many redeeming qualities at first glance. unless the "grip" means they magnetically attach to the ground (which is possible, it is a game) then 95 percent of my rovers end up on their sides or upside down from a poorly timed turn or taking a bump too fast.

in it's most simplistic manner, I don't expect this would be too difficult to do, all it would take is a tri-coupler flipped upside down, and you've got 3 well designed landers on one large launch rocket

I would expect that any civilization advanced enough to be undetected thus far by us and still able to arrive at our vicinity by some means would have done the reasearch to realize that where they were going wouldn't kill them. I suppose the only caveat to this rule would be if it's a xenophobic civilization (think daleks) that simply want to kill anything that isn't them, and don't actually care about the planet they're conquering, in which case there's about 1001 ways to make Earth relatively uninabitable. Heck, Humanity as a whole is doing it right now and we're not even trying. I suppose another possibility is that the alien civilization could destroy us without actually intending to. In the same way that it's theorized how something introduced to their ecosystem from us could work the other way around. Say they bring their pets which absorb oxygen and produce methane in massive quantities, and just so happen to reproduce rapidly in a hermaphroditic manner? one or two of those get loose and any organism that doesn't breath methane no longer lives on earth. Going past that, thinking about where humanity was at scientifically 200 years ago which is a drop in the cosmic bucket, we may not even be able to comprehend what we are dealing with. Who's to say we wouldn't be dealing with beings made purely of something that we consider pseudo-science nowadays but is highly hazardous to life as we know it. In either case, any civilization that would have mastered interstellar travel would most likely possess some sort of superweapon akin to what humans have in nuclear weapons. Think dark matter, black holes, the ability to manipulate gravity and plunge our planet into the sun or off into the darkest reaches of space where we are bombarded by asteroids or simply freeze to death. Everybody seems to think that if there was a war it would be fought fairly and on our terms, whereas more likely they would just fly in, bombard our major population centers with some manner of devastating superweapon from an orbit that we couldn't even touch them, and probably wouldn't even set down until the "war" was over. EDIT: anybody who is interested in this thread should pick up the fantastic russian novella Roadside Picnic. Inspiration for the STALKER franchise and a completely bold faced look at what a real alien visit would most likely amount to.

one of the reasons I didn't opt for the steam key. I can keep old versions/save files by simply extracting the game to a different folder. Sorry for your loss, but in what is essentially an open beta like this, it's a necessary evil.

I generally have mine set up at about 150,000. It's far enough away that it's pretty easy to manouver to and from the ISS without any fear that you might accidentally dip into a decaying orbit trying to manouver around, but close enough for most any spacecraft that can reach orbit to get to. That said, there is, of course, no penalty for setting several up at 50,000-100,000 KM intervals until you find one you like best.

Reminds me of one of my more emotional KSP moments, where I had built the large 3 seat command modle into a lander, crahsed it into the mun and stranded the astronauts, and then hastily built a lander with the living space to go retrieve them, which promptly crashed into the mun because I had underestimated how long it would take to slow my descent. My head was literally in my hands. Needless to say I promptly ended both missions. I bet if Squad totalled up all the number of kerbs that were stranded on the mun in this way it would be a startling number lol.

Thanks for the kind words and the resources! I'll be sure to check them out. I think the biggest thing for me that needs work is just general optimization in the building and operation of my craft, or maybe finding out things i'm doing wrong. I don't really get the manouver mode either, so I just sort of wing it, which often ends up with me orbiting Kerbin about a dozen times before getting caught in the sphere of influence for whatever i'm trying to get too (aka the mun) and acquiring orbit from there. The article on using real life math in respect to KSP is something i'll surely check out later. I'd like to do some let's plays with some of my funkier/more difficult designs but it seems like everybody and their dog has an LP out of some game or other. Among my achievements (for anybody who cares) I've done a round trip from the moon (I have about a 1/10 success rate of making the round trip, more often than not I end up flipping my lander on it's side and then sending out a rescue team which flips over on it's side.) set up a space station with docking ports to refuel for a long haul space trip (yet to be attempted). my .19 version went up after I watched "Battle of Vulture's Drift" and got all starry eyed about the prospect of playing star wars, but it ended up with me spending several hours trying to dock an ion powered fighter with the SS. Due to my lack of understanding for using the manouevers, I haven't made an interplanetary trip yet. More often than not my ship ends up in a "sort of" close orbit to wherever i'm heading and never makes a proper intercept, I get bored and go build a plane that "sort of" flies. I've been wanting to set up a SSTO reusable plane with a smallish rocket on it's back to launch up to the space station and "save" fuel, (My current design method of sending up a standard rocket burns up several rockomax fuel tanks and by the time it gets up to the space station there's only about 1000 fuel left) but haven't been able to get the design right. I have a basic understanding of the core game concepts, but all the math behind it is lightyears ahead of where I am.

Hello! Just thought i'd introduce myself before checking some of the other forum posts. I've had KSP since 11/2012 and play it off and on (mainly in spurts). I'm still getting the hang of a lot of the finer points of being a rocket scientist, I don't understand a lot of the more complicated concepts, and I can guarantee it won't be the most efficient designs, but I'm figuring it out and having a ton of fun (and some frustration and sadness, RIP Jebediah) along the way. Love the game and I expect connecting with people who are also tin can rocketeers will be a blast.