tntristan12

Good morning, everyone. Today, I would like to talk about something that I feel I have begun to take for granted in recent years. Perhaps in light of the ongoing debate over whether or not KSP 1.0 is "good enough", or perhaps because I'm just feeling oddly sentimental today, I feel like I should bring to light a personal story, which will hopefully serve to illustrate why KSP is a cut or two above any game I have ever played, despite its imperfections. This is the story of how KSP changed my life, and it's going to be a long one. There will be no tl;dr at the end, so if you don't want to read, you don't have to. I suppose it's just something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a few days now. You see, in 2011, I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida studying nuclear engineering. "Why nuclear engineering?" nobody asked... because I was also a midshipman in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), and had been for 3 years running. This was the year before my graduation, and me, being of unconventional fitness (read: very out of shape) for a naval officer in training, I was probably having a harder time assimilating than most in my class. In fact, I would go so far as to say I never truly felt like I belonged in the military, but since I had been a cadet for four years in high school, and a midshipman for three years in college, well... Newton's first law, and all that. It was very hard to alter the trajectory of my life by that point. So, I had resigned myself to an unhappy life wherein my degree felt bought rather than earned, and the one job I was qualified for was a job that made me feel like an outsider, to say the least. It should therefore go without saying that I was suffering through a very real battle with depression. I will not go into detail, but there was a very real chance I would not be here today if certain things didn't happen the way they did. I would like to talk about one of those things, when a friend of mine who I'd known for about a year before had randomly started messaging me about this fun little game where you could launch things into the air and watch them explode. He had just downloaded a mod which introduced a giant sandstone brick that was supposed to be placed into orbit for the extra challenge. He was talking about a new game called Kerbal Space Program. Now, before I get into my reasons for being as excited as I was, let me tell you a little bit of background information about myself. I grew up in Florida, and not too far from a town called Titusville. For those of you who don't know, Titusville is Astronaut City - a stonesthrow away from Kennedy Space Center (the real KSC). Because of this, I was always interested in space growing up. I would watch the science channel to learn about astronomy and the history of the universe. Astronauts often spoke at my school, and would talk about the space shuttle and International Space Station as the breaking developments of the day. To top it all off, my grandfather was an engineer on both Gemini and Apollo, and his stories fueled the fire of my curiosity. I used to read books about space, space ships, space travel, astronauts, the space station, Apollo, the Constellation Program, you name it. I even drew sketches of rockets and aircraft before I even knew what they properly looked like! That was me... ...And for a long time, I forgot that. It had been over 30 years since the last time anybody had been to the moon, and nobody was talking about going back. Interest in STEM in my school was at an all-time low, and nobody seemed interested in turning science fiction into science fact. Throw in 9/11, the war on terror, and now you had an entire generation entering high school whose only real calling was to serve in the military. I guess I got swept up in that, and that's how I ended up forgetting my passion. Like I said, for seven long years I didn't devote an iota of thought to the aerospace industry. I'd forgotten about it. So, anyway, back to 2011. KSP had just come out, and when I downloaded it for the first time and built my first tentative rocket, I was ecstatic! It took me several weeks before I put my first virtual rocket into orbit (keep in mind, this was before the map view came out, so the only way to verify your orbit was to look at tables circulating around on the forums to make sure your velocity was correct for the altitude). When I downloaded my first mod, I could put satellites into orbit! I could pretend that I was my grandfather, working on Gemini balancing my designs, making sure they weren't too heavy but could still make orbit. I wanted to learn everything! The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation was the first thing of many things I picked up during my independent research. In a month, I was obsessed! When the Mun first came out in 0.12, I could become an Apollo astronaut, blazing a trail to the moon and witnessing the amazing feats of engineering I was born too late to see. I was so entranced by this game that my studies began to suffer. It depressed me that I could finally live my life's dream, but only in a game... So, I did something about it... I quit! It took me another year, but eventually I got up the courage to do what it had taken me eight long years to do... I quit ROTC, and decided that my future would belong in the private sector. They tried to talk me out of it, and I lost the support of my family along the way, but oddly, I felt like it was the first decision I'd ever made in my entire adult life. However, the question arose: Where do I go from here? Well, I won't bore you with the details, but amidst all the turmoil of my late, fateful decision on that one day in April just over three years ago, a woman came into my life and helped me pick up the pieces. She didn't know about rockets, or Tsiolkovsky, or KSP, or any of that, but she brought stability to my life that until then, I'd just never experienced. With her encouragement, I applied for graduate school at UF, for aerospace engineering. Me - a washed up officer candidate with a degree in an unrelated field whose only exposure to aerospace systems was a computer game and books that I'd read over a decade ago - and, against all odds, I was accepted! As I attended my first classes, I realized how much background I had already accumulated through my own research. They never explained what Delta-V was, but I knew! They never told me how the last point an external impulse was applied to a satellite must always be on the resulting orbit, but I knew! I knew the shape of an orbit because I had already done the research, because KSP had inspired me to do so! As a result, I was exactly where I needed to be. When I approached a professor about research opportunities with the university, he told me something I would never forget: But I would not have sought these opportunities if it weren't for that game I'd been introduced to in 2011. I would not have gotten involved in a project to build (and subsequently annihilate) a satellite for science. I would not have gone to New Mexico this past summer to research satellite dynamics, and win an award for my research. I would not have a thesis and a journal publication pending because I would have been stuck in the past, going through the motions of a life I didn't really want. So, you see, when I say KSP changed my life, I mean that it saved my life. I may not have always agreed with the direction it has taken as a game, but KSP did what nothing else in my life had ever done to that point - it inspired me to chase down what had only been a dream before. Today, I am finalizing my thesis after having received some excellent praise on it from my research advisor. I'm on track to graduate this August with a completely new degree, after having literally altered the trajectory of my life because of a computer game that came out in 2011. My resume is stronger than it's ever been, and I am already looking at jobs as a contractor (ironically) for the US Air Force (yes, I may not have gone into the military, but I will at least get the chance to serve my country using nothing but my education and ingenuity). I owe KSP a huge debt of gratitude for its part in helping me make this decision. Felipe: Thank you for making this game! It has truly changed my life. Thank you for reading.

I vote they set the default to 42%, because at least that would solve everything!

I am with the OP on this one. It bothers me that the revert option gets greyed out upon leaving focus. However, comma... I can see why the devs did it this way. If you store the revert states for one flight indefinitely, you would have to do it for *all* flights, indefinitely. That storage adds up! Especially when you have ongoing flights that can last for years in-game (bases, stations, and grand tours). It gets even *more* complicated when you have vessels docking! e.g. what do you think should happen if vessel A docks with vessel B, and you revert? Does it revert to vessel A's starting point, or vessel B's? Ultimately, they way they've done it requires the player to be more strategic with their launches. I believe the revert option is mainly for those startup "oops" moments that you have, like "oops, I forgot a parachute" or "oops, I didn't activate SAS and now my command module is being pitched towards the VAB at high velocity". If you get to the point where you are getting twitchy about unforseen accidents ruining your mission, you really should quicksave. At least in that case you *know* you have a backup.

Also, yesterday was a national holiday in Mexico.

I totally agree. Even if something like kerbal mental health doesn't become a feature, it would still help with immersion and those more realistic players would have a but more to do if Kerbals had more than just the hitchhiker pod to relax in. One thing that always bugged me about crewable parts until now is that kerbals always seem to need to be sitting down in something. In fact, it always seems like they're sitting in a command chair, even in cases where a command chair doesn't make sense! Another thing that bothers me is the lack of horizontally oriented IVA views. If someone wants to make a surface base, pretty much their only option is to land the habitat on its round bottom, which makes it more difficult to integrate into modularly designed bases. You *could* just land the hitchhiker on its side, but then the kerbals would be either sideways or upside down, which really screws with my immersion. - - - Updated - - - I'm sure it's a great mod, but is it too much to ask to have something like this in stock as well?

But... Squad's bullheaded insistence on enforcing "lego-style gameplay" by forcing the player to sift through hundreds of only-slightly-different individual panels and parts precludes this kind of sensible, efficient, and interesting gameplay. Does it not?

I would like to voice my support for a "snacks" mechanic, which has levels of difficulty based on the consequences of not providing enough. For example, easy has no consequences, medium involves kerbals losing the ability to do their jobs efficiently (they behave like they have no experience because they're so hungry), and hard involves death. Some variant on these could also work. Just an idea.

Falacy of relativity: Just because other features may be more objectively important doesn't mean that broken aesthetics should be a part of the game.

I refuse to vote in this poll. The idea that realism must involve bad/boring/hard/whatever gameplay is ludicrous. There should be an option for both, because they do not in any way exclude one another.

I'd like to add to 5th Horseman's sentiment by saying that the lack of realism in this aspect removes a lot of frustration from the game. One thing I like to do is create communication networks with Remote Tech, in which I edit the save file to put my satellites in a perfectly synchronized formation. I would hate to see my carefully planned networks fall apart because of this.

Ah, okay. That's why it's so popular!

So this question is more of a technical curiosity than anything, but I've wanted to know for a long time... What does MM actually do, in layman's terms? I have a vague understanding that it makes the modules from different mods work together, but I would really like to know more.

But can't there be a reasonable middle ground? Like, what if instead of insta-scanning the entire planet, you only insta-scan the parts that are immediately visible? That could be as much as half of an entire planet, which would require two or three scans at most to get all of the information that you could want out of the big scanner. It isn't as efficient as insta-scanning the entire planet, but it is more immersion and involves the player more.

That is quite generous of you, rkman. By my estimation, 1.0 has barely even left alpha!

What I want to know is why does the tech tree need to start at exactly one point? Why can't we pick a starting position that allows us to begin with a focus on either aircraft, manned rocketry, or unmanned rocketry?

Heh. Nice graph! I wonder where I fit in. Probably somewhere near the middle, seeing as how I'm not as prolific a poster as regex, but I am pretty much always around. The thing is, I love KSP. I am saddened/perplexed by some of the turns it's development has taken, but overall I feel the devs are doing a competent job.

It's debatable whether or not the game really ever left alpha, to be honest. With so many new features added in the previous version, lots of things still feel unpolished (*cough*clouds*cough*).

I don't think anyone is arguing that this is a great update. There are so many new features on offer; so many new dimensions to gameplay. The devs have finally pioneered features that have been on the backburner for years, and it's so great to see their vision finally come together! The question we must ask is, "is this a release-quality update?" to which I (and undoubtedly many others) would say, "no - at least, not quite yet." This update had so much potential, but because the devs insisted on calling this the release version, it ended up squandering some of that potential. This is so very much not a release-quality update, and for that, I am disappointed - however good this update may, under different circumstances, have been.

Oh well. I'm sure that's just a placeholder for 0.27. Good thing we're still in alph-Wait... Wait, what? This is the release version!? ...Yikes...

I will say this in favor of the inclination requirement: at least it encourages more diverse orbits from the player.

I agree with 5th. I'm willing to accept insta-scan as an abstraction, but I could do without the artificial limit on inclination. I will probably also be time warping through a few orbits before I allow myself to scan, anyway. I kinda wish a full scan would take at least one orbit to complete.

Why does it need to be an option? It's a number in the engineering report! Don't open the engineering report if you enjoy building by the seat of your pants. There's no shame in that. Sometimes I like to build my rockets first and then analyze the delta-v characteristics after I've made it look all pretty. There is nothing stopping players from using or disregarding the new information, but not presenting it at all is to impose a very specific game play style upon the player. Isn't that what squad DOESN'T want?

Why would presenting the player with useful information turn it into a spreadsheet game? You want to talk about soreadsheets? Right now, opening up Excel is the best way I have to compute rocket delta-v without downloading a mod to do it for me. In my case, the distinct lack of a delta-v readout has literally turned KSP into an actual spreadsheet game...

I'm not immediately 100% opposed to insta-scan, but I do think scanning the *whole entire planet* strains my disbelief somewhat. Can't they just make it so it scans all visible parts of the planet at the time that the scan is begun? That way, if you're at a higher altitude, you have more parts of the planet visible (possibly at the expense of resolution, which I understand is not the main selling point of the large scanner anyway). I just wish a little more thought were put into this feature.

Hmmm. I'm not sure how kludgy this would feel in practice. Don't strutted parts still move independently? Removing that might make it too easily exploitable, but I would have to see it in practice to know that for sure.