mdosogne

Fuel cells would be nice, but I'd rather Squad add reasons to need electricity, especially later in the tech tree *cough*life-support*cough*

Another idea, alternative to right-click menu: a stage-editing mode like the action-group assignment mode wherein no parts can be moved, but they can be (multi) selected by clicking. The staging list can then auto-scroll to the selected part, and keep the staging selection synch'd with the editor selection.

Thanks, but highlighting a part is not really the problem I have; rather, it is scrolling through a long staging list, trying to: a) select one or two parts of a symmetric group which staging has collapsed into one icon attempting to select the whole symmetry group, which for whatever reason gets broken into two icons in the staging list. c) drag-and-dropping the staging to find it went in the wrong group, and then having to repeat A or B.

I think contracts and strategies need some serious rebalancing. Not only do I have much too long to complete some contracts, they offer way too high a payout which (with some strategies) make the game too easy. Case in point: I've been playing the game since 0.18, so I thought I'd try out some "hard mode" settings and started a new career mode with custom difficulty settings: - initial funds, science and rep set to zero - science, funds and rep rewards set to 50% - funds penalties: 250%, reputation penalty 500% (although this is a moot point because I have yet to fail a contract) I spent ~4h playing the game in 0.25. Two attempts to get to kerbin orbit, a mün flyby, minmus landing (2 biomes) and return, and a mün landing (1 biome) and (nearly-botched) return. All but the last tech level is unlocked (but not all purchased). How is this possible? a) Unpaid Research (20%) Outsourced R&D (30%) and c) a some WAY over-paid contracts (even at 50% setting): 1. plant a flag on minmus. I picked up this contract while already landed there, since it hadn't appeared yet when I launched. Advance $6k, Completion $32k. Strategies translate this to an extra 526 science. 2. Test Kerbodyne KR-2L in suborbital trajectory over Kerbin. Advance: $79k Completion $242k plus 3.2k science, plus 4.2k science from strategies. That last one feels plain old cheaty; 7400 science without getting to a stable Kerbin orbit?! Sure it cost me some funds, but I still took home $180k from this mission alone. The ship itself took 10 minutes to build; cost 48k to launch; went straight up (as a single stage, SRBs and all), (nearly) straight down, was recovered at 96%, and gave enough science to unlock all but the last tech level. How is it that this Kerbodyne test contract gave 173 rep, when rescuing Podnard Kerman gave only 9? I'll have to try this again, with contract payout set at 10%; or stay away from the outsourced R&D, which feels a bit unbalanced.

I second the idea. Hovering over a part on a large ship and then attempting to find the matching entry in a staging list that requires scrolling (especially if the part is in a symmetry group) is a PITA. I don't know about typing in the stage number (new UI and all) but at least give us a buttons to adjust staging such as: increment / decrement / new stage This would be useful outside the VAB too (e.g. after docking, staging of two ships can be weird).

I'm really liking this mod, wish Squad would pick up on some of these ideas. Is there a way to configure the crew capacity on station contracts? I'm getting a lot of contracts offered calling for 5-12 kebals... given that lab modules seem to count as 2 crew capacity, this is just too easy. For those playing with life support mods, higher crew capacity makes things harder. For those of us without such mods, the contract is too easy. I'd like to see an orbital station contract for 50+ kerbals... especially around more distant celestial bodies. Stock station with crew capacity of 109: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vr5oyg1c30z63xz/RingStation109.png?dl=0 Other station-building requirements I'd love to see: - Orbital stations had in a specific orbits... - Requiring more interesting pieces, and specific numbers; e.g. multiple docking ports, specific port sizes, antenna types... - Resource storage capacity (for refueling stations), etc. Another thing: is there a known issue with contracts resetting (not due to upgrading the mod)? I had a contract to put an orbital station around Minmus... Upon achieving synchronous orbit with line-of-sight to my Minmus base on the ground, I went to check if the contract was complete and found all contracts had disappeared!

The point of Sandbox mode is to keep you busy while Career mode is developed, and for players who prefer role-playing to career grinding. It doesn't make sense for all engines to be "balanced in sandbox"; better engines represent improvements/breakthroughs in technology; higher technology isn't available at the beginning of the space race, and costs more to manufacture. I expect these engines to be balanced by correct placement in the tech tree and appropriate construction costs.

I like them. I've unlocked the whole tech tree in .23, and I expect better engines than the Mainsail (which I didn't use anyway…) Now I can build a stock Eve ascent vehicle that might actually be pointy enough to plough through that atmosphere soup.

I remember the first time I sent an ion-powered probe to Jool - spending over an hour at 4x physics warp... can't wait to try this mod!. Time-warping ion drives should be part of stock, instead of the .23.5 tweak. I'm also glad to see the orbital decay; I've been manually deleting debris with PE < 60KM for a long time now, and finding it tedious. I understand it would wreak havoc on many player's stations and satellites, but would you consider an option to extend the orbital decay into the exosphere? Since you're already calculating orbital decays, consider a "station keeping" option which auto-drains RCS to counteract the drag… (and maybe an alarm when RCS is running out; another reason to refuel my stations periodically

I agree: there should be different generations of rockets. This can be 'balanced' by requiring loads of research to unlock a new generation. I don't think the SLS should become cheaper, however...

For the moment, I've used module manager to add map tracking capability to the stock antennae. I considered adding it to the command modules directly, but that requires more work and I always put an antenna on my ships. I really like how this mapping system works, and appreciate how it's integrated with science. I'd love to see some gameplay improvements: 1. Would be nice to bring up the map for any body from the tracking station, and see all craft (and debris, if the filter is enabled) tracked on the map. 2. Could map tracking be enabled for all vessels automatically? There are a few ways to look at this: a) KSC can track a vessel's location with its radio telescopes from kerbin, or need a satellite system to track location (RemoteTech integration?) 3. Although the red update line looks neat, I'd rather improve the performance by a) scanning the surface once and revealing parts of the map as they are scanned instead of continuously regenerating the map or updating only those parts of the map that are revealed by scanning. I have no idea where to begin with the first two, but if I can figure out how to build from sources I'll try my hand at #3.

As someone already pointed out, this mod is an invitation for the kraken, since faraway vessels are part of the same physics simulation they are subject to greater floating point error. Bumping the distance up a bit seems like an OK solution, but what I'd really like to have is separate physics simulation(s) for distant craft(s) - put those unused processor cores to work!

Well then, since refueling is allowed… I'll have to make a trip to Duna Base. Question: do orbital stations count as pre-existing bases? I'm sure they would still prefer multi-nodes to R.A.P.I.E.R. engines.

Not to diminish your christmas spirit or anything, but on the topic of counting… Shouldn't that be 4 presents * 5 for far out = 20 + 2 for cover of darkness = 22? I don't think bonuses get multiplied, which unfortunately drops the total to 99.

I caught the last counting error but can't count my own presents… d'oh!

The engineers at KSC have already started on the 'Nog, so they revived an old SSTO designed for small payloads instead of building a sleigh. They couldn't find the wish list, but they know what's hot this year and opened up a few crates of R.A.P.I.E.R. engines! I airdropped 4 such presents under cover of darkness (+2) to the island runway (+10), and then pulled a high-g turn to make sure they were safely landed (well, mostly for the fun of buzzing the tower) and then returned to KSC safely: I then redid the mission and dropped another 4 before returning in true kerbal style -- lost two engines on landing. Question: if we do multiple delivery runs, do the bonuses count for each run? I'm going with a no, so that's 8 presents + 2 + 10 for a total of 20. Total number of presents is now 107!

Unless there'a a penalty for not showing the safe landing, doesn't that make 19?

If there is no oxidizer on the runway, there won't be any used in flight. I don't think this rule is necessary, but showing the resource tab on the runway scene is important. A question about the rules, specifically 'use of Engineer disqualifies entry as STOCK'. If I have mods installed which do not alter physics/aerodynamics but none are used for the flight, does it count as stock? I've been playing with Alarm Clock, Persistent Trails, Engineer (not used during flight) and Clouds (not the city lights). I've flown my craft in .23 with and without engineer installed; here are the photos without engineer: http://imgur.com/a/aZxoa There is some part clipping, but I solemnly swear it's legit - I did not use the debug menu (just zooming way in). There are only 6 intakes for the three engines, and there's no monopropellant or oxidizer aboard. I hit 2304m/sec around 40km altitude, with all 6 intakes funneled into a single engine. I had to fly retrograde to reach this ground speed without going into orbit (first prograde attempt had me out at 150+ km). Is there any extra flair for flying with an aerodynamically unstable craft? I.e. COM at or behind center of lift?

[duplicate post retracted]

[duplicate post retracted] sorry for the multiple posts; I was getting network errors, and am now unable to delete them :S

I could be mistaken, but I recall one of the developers saying (during Kerbal Kon?) that 0.23 contains an overhaul of the whole-vessel resource type (monopropellant, electric charge, intake air) such that every last bit of the resource is available for consumption (previously if there were three parts each with half the required resource, nothing would happen - now there is 1.5x the resource available). That means that with multiple intakes you can fly higher than in 0.22

Great mod, thanks! A question/suggestion about CPU and texture memory usage: When either the big or small map is open, it appears to be scanning the surface line by line, even if there's already data for that location loaded into the currently visible texture. Is that really necessary? I believe it could be optimized by: a) performing a scan of the mapped areas only, then incrementally updating parts of the texture as the map is completed, or scan the entire surface into a texture once, revealing only those portions that are scanned (as they're scanned). Either way would mean I don't need to manually refresh the big map (which is a bit slow, considering most of the data is already there). Also, given that a 1024x1024 texture is only 4MB, would you consider an option of keeping the X most recent map textures in memory? I really don't mind sacrificing 16 megs to keep the last three textures cached so I can switch between the different map views quickly. Forgive me if this has already been suggested and/or fixed; life has been interrupting my KSP lately and I haven't read all 50 pages.

Dropping my ship onto the launch pad to test chutes is getting old… I'm really looking forward to the next update with a chutes calculator! I've scaled a stock chute model to create a Mk16-XXL (2.5m), but am not so sure about the drag parameters, mass, etc. Would you consider including an estimate of the chute mass and volume based on chute material, size and force? Keep up the good work!

You mentioned future plans to Just an idea, but what if the chutes were angled outward as a function of their distance from COM, where distance is measured perpendicular to the velocity vector? I'm not interested in modeling air/fluid dynamics to generate repulsion, but a quick and dirty simulation of the end result would be nice. Of course, after fanning out, if you want to have the chutes fail because they're just placed too closely, that's fine by me.Speaking of packing chutes too closely, I'm looking for something big to replace the 336 stock chutes I've been using to land a fully fueled, 750-tonne beast on Eve. On 16 of the 2.5m stacks sits a conical 1.25 to 2.5m Rockomax adapter with a drogue chute at the top and 20 radial chutes strapped to it, plus struts to keep the thing attached… Please consider making some 2.5m chutes… the sort of thing that would slow a stack of double orange tanks with a mainsail and all

I do not have stretchy tanks installed, but have experienced the same or similar bug: KER (both 0.6.x and 1.0 beta) freeze and refuse to update (even if I load or create a new ship) until I restart KSP. Other than KER (both 1.0b and 0.6.x) I have Protractor, ScanSat and Procedural Fairings installed; I've experienced this issue while building ships of (apart from KER) entirely stock parts. If I can systematically reproduce the issue I'll post steps. That said, this is still an essential mod; keep up the great work!