GavinZac

I was able to 're-enable' the winch menu for horizontal winch by deactivating and reactivating key-based controls.

Super. I don't want to replace the original models (yet) but the new experiments sound useful.

ASCII is plain text, so it should open in a plain text editor I suppose. e.g. Notepad. Yep, Notepad++ opens it fine and describes it as a "normal text file".

You can also use something like Free DynDNS to expose your telemachus server on something like kerbals.dyndns.net and access it anywhere.

This is only true in the VAB. In the SPH things flip the right way. You can test this by making a space plane with 1 central fuselage and 2 additonal side fuselages. Placing a mirrored cockpit on the side fuselages results in two correctly-placed cockpits.

Holy moly I missed this. I've searched in the thread for various things but it's hard to match a negative: is it possible to make this work perfectly using the stock antennae? I'm trying to retain forward compatibility on all ships.

This is called grinding. Doing small missions over and over to save up to do something that is actually fun. It's the "kill 300 x warthogs to level up!" in every RPG. It's the "beat 50 opponents of any class to unlock the Spider outfit!" in every PvP. It's "bring me 10 mammoth tusks" in Skyrim to get Speech+1. It's lazy, time-spent-for-the-sake-of-it game design. KSP has completely avoided it thusfar because you never had to do anything. As much as possible, that feeling should be retained while still creating a sane progression through the game and sense of achievements that are recognised by the game as much as by your own pride. Sure, have these missions in there, but you shouldn't have to do something more than once, or do something that is totally repetitive. I do like the idea of extra prestige for (fully/nearly fully) recovered vehicles though - the more of each spacecraft you bring back, the more money your government are going to let you spend with the understanding that it's not likely to be wasted and quite likely to be reused. If NASA had a reusable spacecraft, they would be in a better position to say "hey, if we can build another one of these for 30% extra investment, it could probably go to Mars".

a With a plain budget, money will accumulate over time*, or completely run out and stop the game; plus it feels wrong to get arbitrary amounts of money for things which don't actually make a profit, like going to the Mun. With the prestige system, money would not accumulate over time, rather the better your prestige, the more you can spend each individual launch. The player should never be discouraged from trying another, slightly or wildly different rocket, which is the most fun factor of KSP. Having prestige instead of money also ties into the 'achievement' factor in both creating a scoreboard or objectively comparing achievements, and in giving our individual Kerbonauts a little bit more of history, prestige and personality. * This might seem like a good thing. It's not. Imagine yourself 10,000 kerbmarks short of that last engine you need. In order to get it, you launch 10 crappy little satellites, grinding out some money doing non-fun things so that you can later do fun things. This makes a bad, grindy game. Much better to motivate you to achieve something, that will semi-permanently provide you with the prestige you need to say to the Kerbal Government: we put a man in orbit, we deserve that funding to do even greater things!

Cheers. It would require a lot of playtesting though to get balances right; with two limiting factors (science and budget) it could be easy to get worked into a corner. If there's enough variety in things to do, though, it should be possible for any player to find something to keep themselves progressing.

Note that I said without getting science; or perhaps achieving something. Really this limits it to anything that fails almost immediately, or that you've done so many times that you're getting 0 science for it. If you're de-orbiting a station that has done science, you don't lose anything; if your de-orbiting or destroying lower stages of a craft you don't lose anything. Regardless, the penalty would be a fraction of that of losing a Kerbal or damaging something that would otherwise be permanent. a key point to KSP is never discouraging trying; this would be a minor penalty to dissuade people from spamming launches for small amounts of prestige or something. In reality, with the Terminate button and the 'revert to launch/vab' buttons, it likely wouldn't get much use anyway.

I think Squad should avoid trying to 'earn' money directly as this will lead to grinding and 'gaming' the system. I think they should, alongside 'Science', add a 'prestige' total. Unlike Science, prestige is not directly spent; but it can go up and down. While Science gives you points for... doing science, prestige could be earned by achievements. The level of 'prestige' you have directly affects the amount of money you can spend per mission (a running total can be kept, but running one expensive emission would not affect another, cheaper mission in terms of a zero-sum total). So to increase your budget-per-mission, you can do things like: Go above the atmosphere +1,000 Take interesting screenshot/'photo' +1,000 Go to orbit +10,000 Go to orbit around the Mun +20,000 Land something intact on the Mun +100,000 Land Kerbals on the Mun +1,000,000 Other Planets +3,000,000 etc. You can lose prestige, and thus get lower funding, by things like: Destroy a craft with no science return -20,000 Kill a Kerbal -100,000 Damage a KSC facility -100,000 What this does is: Reward you for incrementally achieving milestones, rather than getting a load of science by just blasting something into solar orbit and transmitting it back at different stages to get lots of science. Prevent grinding, so that you don't get people having to run missions again and again to save up for a big interplanetary mission Accurately reflect a government/species-sponsored funding paradigm which is not profit-focused. Give a reason to bother going to Dres, etc. once you'd maxed out all the science with 2 or 3 planets. Give an opportunity for collecting achievements and screenshots/photos in a 'gallery' to help personalise the game for each player. The other factor apart from vehicle construction is astronauts, which don't do much yet. I'd like to see, alongside courage and bravery, two more attributes: Science and Prestige. A percentage of science earned by a Kerbal on a mission is added to his total; he gets some of the science for ship-wide experiments, and all of the science from his EVA reports and soil samples and other future EVA experiments. After a (relatively low) amount of science, the Kerbal can be assigned a 'Mission Science Specialist' role; this means that the Kerbal will be a specialist scientist who gets ALL of the science from a mission; that is, if Jeb and Bill go up, and Bill is set as a specialist, he gets all the science points. This makes Bill more valuable more quickly, and gives you a reason both to send him into space and to keep him alive. Having earned that science, Bill now needs something to do with it, otherwise it's just an arbitrary number like Courage and Stupidity. Well, one issue we have at the moment is that there are not many science experiments, and as such they are all a bit overpowered to make up for it. Having a Kerbal with a high Science score on board should unlock 'new' experiments on the same science equipment parts. That is, with just Jeb on board, there would only be one right-click option for science; with Dr. Bill on board, there could be lots. This means we can earn more from science, but also means that science experiments can start off worth a bit less; at the moment it's possible to max out the research tree within a few hours of playing. This would make it harder to do that, and give Dr. Bill value and purpose. An alternative, if that's too difficult to code, is to just simply make the same experiments worth more when run with a better scientist on board. What about poor Jeb, non-specialist? Well, astronauts should also get a percentage of the prestige points towards their score. Completed a docking? +1000 prestige for Bill and Jeb. Now we can set Jeb as our Mission Commander, since Bill already has his role. All of the prestige points will now go to Jeb; earned in the usual way. Again, Jeb becomes more valuable and gives us a reason to send him up and to bring him back safely. Jeb can also earn some individual Prestige points like Dr. Bill can: prestige for time spent in EVA, prestige for fixing parachutes, landing gear and solar panels; prestige for planting a flag, etc. What can we do with Jeb's prestige points? Well, what does having an expert pilot do? Makes it easier to fly the craft. Some ideas for this are things like better indicators: radar altitude, docking alignment indicators, landing prediction indicators, perhaps setting hard limits on things like fuel level (so we don't accidentally burn away the fuel we need for re-entry while trying to dock), or even functions that currently are the preserve of MechJeb like hovering or rendezvous maneuver-node calculating (this will make it both easier, if a player is very good at everything *except* hovering, so they get punished less for that; and harder: rather than just installing MechJeb, people can work towards getting these functions in a way that suits the game). I believe this system would deal with budgets in a way that keeps the game fun, and give astronauts a purpose beyond planting flags.

Unlock the command seat which appears to have an invisible seatbelt which prevents unaided Kerbal reentry. Hmm... I'm actually not sure if the EVA report or the Crew report comes from the seat. Well, another experiment to run!

Yes, if you're dropping the science module(s) as part of 'stages' then you'll lose the data within. Transmit the data before detaching the module (if you're doing pod-and-parachutes-only returns) or bring it back for full points. The materials experiment only stores one data set at a time, yes.

I think it's something to do with the name you give the part. I know that much is true with fairings and nosecones.

You can use Module Manager and Sarbian's Module Manager Extensions to put kOS into everything that can command a ship, even future-proof if you add mods or Squad makes new parts, by installing them and placing a text file with this in it in your GameData folder: If you just put it in by hand into every original part, the next time you update you'll have to do it again.

Is anyone getting latent spinning even when the terminal is off? My crafts are acting as if someone is holding down the 'q' button. Never mind, I think it's something else. Grr.

I've never needed a mod for this!

I've always been describing KSP as "Lego rockets that blow up", now it can literally be that!

I like the music but am hoping for more controls. Hiding the window, for example.

Great! This is, otherwise, a fantastic mod, and very useful (I don't delete debris so I'm somewhat approaching Kessler's Syndrome in my LKO... watching a piece of debris come ever closer on the Targetron, get to within 100m and fly past is pretty exhilarating!)

Zoran, try making sure each print statement is only one line. Like this: print "THIS IS LAUNCH PROGRAMMING". print "FOR Z MAP SATELITE SPACECRAFT".

Yes, the plus means in all (both) versions since 0.6.

0.6+ has somehow made a previously working craft now no longer reach orbit. Any ideas why? It simply runs out of fuel far earlier than before.

This is very exciting! One important thing for robotics I think, though, is array handling. It would make for much cleaner code if we can iterate through legs or arm parts as an array, or use them to select one with the most extreme position or something (e.g. selecting the arm that is closest to an object, controlling that one and not the others)

I have no idea what any of this means, but I hope you do something awesome with it