Matt77

That's odd, the strange string of random letters in my last post was supposed to be a screenshot. I'll try again with a different host... You might need to go to Photobucket to see the full resolution, I think the forum is resizing it.

I'm surprised there isn't more interest in this mod. I came across a glitch today, sent a satellite up into a polar trajectory. When I hit "circularise" the node gave me a perfectly vertical descent back down :-) Not a problem in this case, plenty of time to set a manual node. Log is here in case you want a look.

Good suggestion, in most cases I can't see random failures adding any fun - usually if something goes wrong, it will end the mission one way or another. I like the idea of experimental parts not necessarily doing what they should - you can plan for that, you can't plan for a 150-part ship having a chance of failure on any part. As nikokespprfan alluded to, it would also deal with the exploit where you accept a contract to purely to access a part before it's been unlocked. Also the randomised performance should be decided before the mission begins, so you can't quickload and get a differently performing experiment if you don't like the outcome. Maybe even, the performance could carry over to the production model when it's unlocked? Not failures though, you'd have to assume they eventually got it working in the nominal state. It would give another reason to test parts - you might get a bit more ISP, or slightly more power stored in a battery. But you might lose out...

But be careful because some parts list electric charge per second, and some list it per minute. The first hex core for example uses 1.2 charge per minute, which is 0.02 per second I think. My first few comsats are mainly made up of batteries because of that ;-) I'm not sure how to calculate the darkness time of a probe in a 150km orbit around a body with a diameter of 600km (as an example) - I don't think that's a trivial problem. On top of that, not all vessels have all solar panels facing the sun, especially early on when you only have fixed panels. This website will tell you the darkness time and how much electric charge is required. I use TAC Life Support, which does give you a warning about vessels running low on supplies (including power). Pretty sure you could install that and disable everything except electric charge if you don't want the food / O2 etc.

Thanks both! I've just set up an encounter with Minmus and that is exactly what these buttons do.

Thanks - I am familiar with PreciseNode. I have just watched the video you suggested, it was very basic and doesn't mention the orbit modes. I've also had another look at their GitHub page and couldn't see any mention of these buttons. I am talking about the buttons in your mod labelled "loc, ent, ext, rel, dyn".

Oh I still love the film, believe me - you just ignore the flaws the same way you do when watching Star Wars. If they went for realism, the basic plot would be impossible - a debris field travelling that fast would be in a different orbit, and why is it suddenly travelling so fast anyway? KSP is a lot of the reason I know the plot is nonsense.

Thank you, I confess I did not read the readme. I don't think the xml is created until after first run, so it may be worth noting. My comment about the KSP skin being ugly is no reflection on your excellent mod. Are the orbit modes documented somewhere as well? Or should I know about them already?

Wait til you land on Mun (it won't be on your first attempt...) The sense of achievement is excellent. And it's not just an in-game achievement - you're learning real, useful concepts. If you ever get stranded in orbit with Sandra Bullock, you'll know that heading straight for that space station will ensure you miss it!

I like it a lot. The circularise feature is something I've wanted for ages. How do you change the skin? The KSP skin seems to take more screen space than the Unity one. And it's quite ugly.

Most of the way through this post I must admit I wasn't into it at all. Til I got to the bold part, where it suddenly makes sense. Perhaps you should make a mod to set up the starting conditions. Unless 1.1 brings us a lot of changes to career, I'll try your idea on my 1.1 career. Though I don't want advanced parts available from the start. Are the part costs set so that advanced parts are too expensive at first? I've only had financial problems once in at least 5 runs through the career, and never really look at the cost to build. When I'm saving for my million funds SPH upgrade, I don't really worry too much about a 20k funds rocket! Maybe a balance issue right there...

YES. You can build a nice space station or ground base out of rocket parts, but dedicated parts would be excellent. They should be a priority over aircraft parts, which have been getting far too much attention. It's not Kerbal Flight Program. I haven't used those mods, but Kerbals do need more reason to EVA than jump out, click "EVA Report", jump back in. I like that a lot. Mun should be visible from the start, and maybe Minmus. I'd like to see blurry images through the scope and in the tracking station, so you can't actually see a planet in all it's glory til you reach it. I like this idea too, along with better control on spacewalks. As for water / air parts, as I mentioned I think the space parts need more attention first.

My wireless keyboards batteries tend to expire when a key is held down, so during launch is a common one. I'm adept at flipping the keyboard, opening the battery compartment, and sticking one corner of the cover between the batteries. Usually this is enough, when they reconnect the keyboard is OK again. But I know I will need new batteries soon...

I freely admit I like a bit of eye candy. No matter how many mods I install, the frame rate won't go below 60fps even with my old GPU. So I'm looking to pimp it up some more. I wondered what other people are using. Here's my list: Environmental Visual Enhancements Endraxial's Planets and Moons KSP Real Skybox Astronomers Visual Pack Interstellar V2 Planetshine Distant Object Enhancement WindowShine CollisionFX Engine Lighting Scatterer (with waves disabled, too buggy so far)

I hope Squad continue to evolve KSP. I start a new career every update as by definition, updates make changes. I like those changes, but sadly i reverted to FAR after trying out the new atmosphere, reverted to Proc. Fairings after trying out the stock ones, and am still using many other mods for things that should be stock. Those who don't want to deal with change can always stop installing the updates...

Same here. It's a pain but you can choose which hemisphere gets clouds as demonstrated above. Linux Mint 17.2, Nvidia GTX670 with drivers 352.63. Log file

The most fun I ever had in KSP was my first Mun landing. The landing was more of a "crash", but the pod was intact. I didn't know about quicksave at that time so I mounted a rescue mission. I spent every evening for the next week working on a rescue mission, and without quicksave I was painstakingly testing every part of the mission with test flights. The rescue was a success (although the lander was too tall and toppled over! I got it upright again and WALKED the stranded kerbal 5km to the rescue ship, as I didn't know about the jetpack either!!) Nowadays I just hold F9 down for a few seconds and try again. Although I did allow Jeb to die the other day and take two rescuees with him, that was a major hit to my current space program. He should have packed more ablative. No, unless you're already a rocket scientist you'll need help. I never did the tutorials but I did have an interest in space before, and I knew that orbit isn't up - it's actually falling in such a way that you keep missing the ground. Getting two ships to rendezvous is VERY counter-intuitive, and until I got the Docking Port Alignment mod it was almost impossible to actually dock. Nowadays all the above is child's play, but I use mods for knowing my delta-v, thrust to weight, docking alignment, landing site prediction, precise manoeuvre nodes, and calculating planetary transfers. This is balanced by the realism mods I use to make the game harder in other ways. The controls are ok for rockets. For aircraft, it's fiddly. Hard to fly with keyboard, and joystick support is so patchy you really need the Advanced Fly-By-Wire mod which enables joysticks (imho), but I tend to forget to switch it off after crashing the aircraft and then spend half an hour wondering why my rocket won't fly with keyboard controls...

I want gameplay improvements - a more meaningful career, a reason to do science after the tech tree is finished, and a step away from this thing where they don't want time to matter. Time is one of the MOST important factors in space programs. But I don't care one bit about multiplayer, so I voted for aesthetics - the stock games graphics are shockingly poor.

Oh I love it and use it all the time. But I think Squad would want a simpler implementation. The interface is fine for me too but I'd like to be able to customise the line thickness.

Trajectories is a good solution that takes atmospheric drag into account, it can show you the actual path you'll take or it can adjust it according to the planets rotation, showing your landing spot. I don't think they'd adopt it as stock in its current form though.

Please note only the first sentence confirming the previous posters comment is fact, the stuff about scansat is just pie in the sky... Not sure if its even possible...

The last few suggestions regarding the actual topic were interesting ideas. I hope they don't get drowned out by the offtopic discussion above, which is also interesting and worthy of it's own thread (nudge nudge wink wink!)

Good suggestion. The contracts screen doesn't have to do much processing, so popping up the map view shouldn't have too much impact performance-wise. I've often thought that part tests could show you what the part in question looks like. With engines, especially boosters, I don't know the names. Just a thumbnail would do, but the actual model spinning around and its stats would tell me which part it is, and if the contract is feasible. There's plenty of wasted screen space to implement both on this screen.

It does, though I disable the simulation cost as I think the price I pay to upgrade the space centre should include a few PC's. A recent update has added the option that you can't simulate a body until you've visited it (echoing a post above, a reason for probes). Scansat integration would be cool, if you just got the data you've scanned in the simulation plus what can be gathered from observations from Kerbin - planet size is only approximate, and thus your simulation could be slightly out. Atmosphere would be even more of a guess until you drop a probe into it.

If you press alt-F12 it opens a menu. Look for "cheats" and you'll find an option to mark the contract as complete. I used it the first time I matched an orbit and after scratching my head, I noticed the orbit direction dots! You might be going the wrong way...