Lord Aurelius

A bit off topic, but I agree that there's a huge market for games utilizing the editor and physics to allow the player to build their own vehicles/contraptions to solve problems. Bad Piggies is probably the best known example of this (it's a shame Rovio pushed monetization so hard with it though, it's practically unplayable without some sort of adblocking), and there's some other indie games like Besiege, and Homebrew Vehicle Sandbox that use this idea as well. However, none of them have the world scale that KSP does.

I've used mods and configs in the past to fill these holes. The problem is that after a certain point, it gets to be a hassle to keep all the mods updated, plus I can't easily share the craft files or even use them on another install unless I duplicate the entire setup.

So here's a list of some holes in the stock parts catalog: Lifter engine between the Terrier and Swivel with a max thrust of 75 or 80 kN. Could be used as an early game lifter/sustainer engine and an upper stage engine for smaller payloads. 2-Kerbal Gemini-style command pod Longer 0.625 tanks so we don't have to stack absurd numbers of Oscar-B tanks. 0.625m and 2.5m SRBs 1.875m parts (engine(s), adapters, fuel tanks, fairing) Finish 3.75m parts (SAS, nosecone, probe core, service bay, command pod, engine clustering adapters) 5m parts (engine(s), adapters, fuel tanks, fairing) Large RTG/nuclear reactor More RCS parts (larger and smaller, 5 way thrusters) Smaller radial and/or inline parachutes Larger ion, nuclear and rapier engines Electric propeller (not the physics hacks we have now) More lights (large searchlight, low-profile self-illumination lights, compact lights for small rovers) Larger landing legs Surface sampling device (so unmanned probes can take surface samples) Medium-large rover wheels between the TR-2L and the XL3, and medium-small rover wheels between the S2 and the M1. Any and all of those parts would be welcome in future updates.

Gotta love that first "launch" to get a crew report and EVA report without actually going anywhere. Which from a progression standpoint is kind of sad actually. I liked how SETI rebalanced all the science payouts around KSP to be 0 so you actually had to go out and visit new places to get science instead of just puttering around the space center. Although it is kind of entertaining in a sad way that one of the best ways to get a bunch of easy science points in the early game is to build a jet-powered rover with the parts from the first aircraft tier because apparently electric wheels are more complicated than a jet engine...

In terms of features I would like to see in 1.4 or other future updates... The only other major feature that KSP is missing IMO is stock life support. This would finally let the game properly balance manned flights, especially now that we have a stock comm network feature. Otherwise, most of the work that needs to be done is polish and balance. There graphics and audio still needs an overhaul, there's a few gaps in the stock parts list, the tech tree still leaves a lot to be desired, and career mode needs some more direction, but the frameworks for these are already in place so they count more as polish and balance items rather than new features. Although I wouldn't mind some time based mechanics as well along the lines of Kerbal Construction Time. As far as what 1.4 will actually contain, other than a unity upgrade and bugfixes (and some new bugs for the version after to fix), it's total speculation right now since we only just heard Squad officially mention the version number.

I see your point, and making flying bases opens up a bunch of cool alternatives. In fact, I could see "hovercraft" style bases on Laythe where the only wheels are landing gear, and it uses jet engines for propulsion to push itself up on land, with a similar thing being done for Eve with stock propellers.

Thanks for the feedback guys. When I thought about what I was trying to accomplish with this challenge some more, I realized that I not only want to see gigantic mobile bases, but also practical ones (which is where I was going with all the arbitrary part requirements). So I was thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to split this up into two separate challenges. One would be focused on building a "practical" mobile base that would be a useful mobile lab in career mode, the other would be more of an anything goes, with bigger the better. The practical science bases would use lowest mass as their base score. Bonus points would be awarded for features like suborbital hop ability, being amphibious, or having a dockable smaller science rover/hopper to go out and grab samples. This challenge would have required parts of a science lab, space for 3 kerbals (engineer plus two scientists for the lab), one of each science experiment, and the ability to be self-sufficient. If it's purely electric driven, then ISRU and fuel is unnecessary. If the base is powered by jet engines or rockets (like an amphibious base, or one capable of very high speeds using landing gear), or capable of suborbital hops or has a dockable vehicle that uses the fuel, then it needs to have ISRU so it can be fully self-sufficient. The anything goes challenge would be more about building big, with different categories for single-launch and assembled-in-orbit. In this case, the larger base wins with bonus points for aesthetics (not sure how to objectively score this though) and features like the ability to pack up and fly back into orbit. Think Atlantis from Stargate. All bases should have electric wheels they can use for low-speed maneuvering. This goes for amphibious bases as well so they can drive out of the water. I'm willing to make an exception for Laythe where the base doesn't have to have wheels if it has a dockable vehicle that does since the islands are fairly small. Any dockable companion vehicles that go with these bases would also be worth bonus points (any suggestions on how to score this?). As far as score multiplier for each planet goes, I was thinking that maybe as a side project (maybe even in a different thread) we could come up with a formula for calculating the difficulty of landing an object on a given planet. It would combine the dV to get to the planet (from the KSP dV maps) with the planet's surface gravity and atmosphere. Additionally, it would consider the difficulty of navigating to the planet. Kerbin's moon are relatively very easy to navigate to and wouldn't get any navigation bonus, any of the planets beyond Kerbin would get a respectable bonus, and a moon of another planet would get even a larger bonus. Whatever multipliers come out of the formula could be adjusted and used with other challenges, not necessary just this one. What do you guys think?

The Mobile Base Challenge Not open yet, looking for feedback on rules before going live I've always been fascinated by large mobile bases and the even larger rockets needed to launch them. To this end, I've decided to have a go at creating a challenge involving them. The rules are designed to create large, self-sufficient mobile bases. Preliminary Rules 1. Stock parts only. This includes any part editing via ModuleManager or otherwise except for as defined below with adding approved modules to capsules. As much as I love mods, it's much simpler to score and share craft files if everything is stock. If there's enough interest, I might consider adding a modded craft category later since there are some pretty cool wheels/tracks/etc in mods. 2. Information and autopilot mods are allowed. MechJeb, Kerbal Engineer, Throttle Controlled Avionics, and other information/autopilot mods that don't alter the parts are fine. If using MechJeb (or other information mods that require parts to function), please use a module manager config (like MechJeb and Engineer For All) to add it to the command pods instead of using the MechJeb parts. 3. Stock solar system only. There's some cool alternative solar systems out there that provide a lot more challenge, but I don't want to have to come up with planet score multipliers for all of them. If someone else wants to extend this challenge to include modded planets, go for it. 4. Mobile base must be able to drive on the surface of a planet using electric rover wheels. Additional rockets/jet engines/landing gear are fine if you want your base to be capable of higher speeds on appropriate terrain or be amphibious. 5. Mobile base must be self-sufficient and include power generation, ISRU, drills, ore tanks, and at least one of each fuel tank type (for refuelling other craft if the base doesn't make use of the fuel itself). There should be enough energy generation/batteries to allow 24/7 operation (drilling, refining, science research) on the target planet. If you need to use fuel cells to get through the night, that's fine. 6. Mobile base must include the following parts: At least four electric rover wheels At least one science lab At least one ISRU refinery module At least one drill Enough space for at least 8 kerbals At least one of each fuel tank type LOX capacity should be at least equivalent to the 1.25m long tank Monoprop capacity should be equivalent to 1.25m inline tank Ore capacity should be at least equivalent to one 2.5m tank Xenon capacity should be at least equivalent to one 1.25m tank At least one probe core At least one of the largest comm antennas 7. Mobile base must be launched into orbit, flown to the planet, and landed on the planet. No hyperedit/cheat menu shenanigans outside of testing. Orbital and in-situ assembly is acceptable for very large bases. Preliminary Scoring (Please help with this based on relative difficulty) Point multipliers based on target planet: Minmus: 0.5x Mun: 1.0x Eve/Duna/Ike/Dres: 1.5x Laythe/Eeloo/Moho: 2.0x Tylo: 3.0x Bonus points: Base is capable of short range powered hops on target world: Multiplier based on world (help with this) Base is amphibious on Eve/Laythe: Help me determine this Base is capable of launching into orbit from target world and flying to another planet: Lots of bonus points, based on world (if you manage this on Eve, you win). Submission Requirements: Pictures of your craft in a VAB, on the launchpad, after each staging event to orbit, doing the interplanetary transfer, doing the landing deorbit burn, just before landing, and once the rover has landed. Extra pictures and video are always welcome. If your rover is built using multiple launches, have pictures at each of the above stages for each distinct craft up until they're added to the main base. Craft file is also required to validate entry. If you rover requires multiple launches, include all craft files. As you can see, this challenge is still a WIP. Any and all help is appreciated with ironing out these rules. Later this weekend I'll put together my own craft to demonstrate the challenge.

I vaguely remember that discussion. The RT-10 was definitely overkill as the first booster for the same reasons I mentioned about the Flea crushing the occupant, only to a larger degree. It seems like the Flea is a band-aid to the problem of the game not having a lifter engine between the 0.625m Spark and the 1.25m Swivel, which is quite a large gap. It sounds like they're adding some new engines to address these issues in the expansion, but it's annoying to have to pay for DLC to get fixes for problems. Back to my original issue with the Flea, right now it's a one-trick pony for your first career flight. I didn't mention it earlier, but I made a simple mod awhile back to switch those very things so the EVA report was low space only (like the crew report is now) and the Crew report was biome dependent (I haven't done a good job of keeping it updated though, kind of got burned out on KSP when it went 1.0 with all its problems and unfinished content, and got tired of having to mess around with mods to fix the problems). Sample returns should definitely be worth a lot more due to the extra difficulty involved. Also, we need some sort of camera experiment besides the sentinel that functions similarly to a crew report for probes. High science value, but a LOT of data to transmit. Agreed. Especially with the part about the game not providing enough information. I didn't really enjoy KSP (other than messing around for laughs) until I discovered MechJeb. It's telling that KerbalEDU has these readouts, but for inexplicable reasons they haven't made their way into the base game. Another thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post is that to really properly balance the game we need some sort of life support. Kerballed flights have always been much more effective than probes since the extra weight (especially if you're using the small lander can) is negligible, you get access to some of the best science experiments, your kerbal can reset experiements or repair things depending on their class, not to mention the infinite EVA fuel. The hiring cost isn't really even an issue with the loads of rescue missions I'm always getting so I never have to actually hire any, and if I wanted to send one on a one-way mission, it wouldn't even be an issue from a gameplay standpoint since there's no penalties for stranding or killing kerbals. The com network for probes provides an interesting challenge, but it also ultimately makes probes even less desirable. Life support could provide a proper balance to manned missions versus probes and make the progression you described of going from suborbital to orbital to stations to exploring other planets even more interesting. Just like the com network feature, make it an option that can be enabled on a per-game basis so players who like things the way they are can keep playing, but players who want proper balance can have it. Apologies for getting so far off the tech-tree topic, but like has been mentioned, the tech tree is just one piece of the larger overall balance puzzle and all the pieces need to be fit with each other.

I've put a lot of thought into this off and on since before 1.0. I need to dig out my old tech tree spreadsheet and update it, but here's a (relatively) quick overview of the balance I would like to see. Note that in some cases I also advocate for rebalancing some of the parts to make them better fit with everything else. 1. I very much like Unmanned Before Manned, but for the sake of the players who like starting out with Kerbals, have the Mk1 capsule and Stayputnik available from the start. To avoid needing batteries right away, all the probe cores should be rebalanced with much better batteries than they have now. Also, Stayputnik desperately needs SAS. 2. Starting engine should NOT be an SRB that flings the capsule straight up with enough force to crush the occupant, especially since the game doesn't really communicate how to adjust the thrust limiter. The flea right now is useless after the first flight anyways since it's completely outclassed by the RT-10, to give it more utility it could be worked into a vacuum SRB with high vacuum ISP before the other upper stage engines are unlocked. Actually, the starting engine and fuel tank could be the Reliant with the 1.25m long fuel tank so the player doesn't need to stack excessive numbers of smaller tanks right at the start, and the progression would be in terms of adding an upper stage with an appropriately sized fuel tank and engine. Not to mention that it would actually have much more realistic rocket proportions than a flea plus capsule. The starting node should also have steerable fins (although their cost desperately needs to come down, 4 fins costs a lot more than the starting rocket engine...). 3. Like in the discussion above, larger fuel tanks and clustering adapters should be unlocked before larger engines so the progression would be through adding more engines until better ones become available. Engine costs should be significantly increased, they should be one of the most expensive parts of any rocket. Probe cores and capsules should also be quite expensive. 4. Electric parts (batteries, solar, probe cores) should be available sooner. Also includes electric rover wheels. The remote guidance system probe cores should be available MUCH sooner, even before the other probe cores past the stayputnik instead of shoved at the end of the tech tree like they are now. 5. Science parts should be available sooner. Nothing should be unlocked past the 300 science cost node. Thermometer and barometer should be available from the start, accelerometer, gravimeter and mystery goo should be available relatively soon after. Mystery goo desperately needs an inline part model. Materials bay and atmosphere scanner should be available a little later, but not terribly so, about the time the player is expected to land on the mun or send their first interplanetary probe. Experiments that are just data (temperature, pressure, acceleration, gravity, atmosphere scan) should be transmittable with 100% efficiency. EVA and crew reports in low orbit should be swapped, so players don't have to hop in and out of their capsule constantly to get all the biomes. Science lab should be last science part to be unlocked. 6. Basic structural parts should be unlocked fairly early. Also, utility parts like ladders and lights should be available near the beginning. 7. Aircraft should be available right after the start in a series of parallel nodes than can safely be ignored if the player isn't interested in aircraft. 8. End-game parts should be things like the Vector, Mammoth, RAPIER, ion engine, nuclear engine, etc since they enable the largest/most advanced craft designs. Sorry for the rambling and not completely organized points, but hopefully you get the idea of what I'm going after. I'll see if I can update those spreadsheets to give everyone an idea of what I'm looking at, along with notes on part/science changes. Like @tater said, all these things are linked together and unfortunately most of the values here are still just placeholders that don't seem to have been put in with much thought.

I've always been a fan of giant rovers and the even bigger rockets needed to launch them. Here's a couple of ideas you can choose between based on your comfort level: Rover: Should be a self-sufficient mobile base. Must contain at least a cupola, science lab, habitation module, mining drills, ISRU resource converter, and enough power generation and cooling to run the drills and resource converter at full speed as long as there's direct sun. Some other neat rover features would be rockets and enough thrust to make short hops (or even return to orbit), making the rover amphibious on Eve or Laythe, and multiple smaller rovers/shuttle craft that can dock with the main mobile base. Destination: Any planet except Jool (and Kerbin) technically works, but the larger, higher gravity worlds are obviously much more interesting (and easier to drive the rover on). Suggested destinations in order of difficulty: Mun Eve Duna/Ike Eeloo Laythe Tylo I did a mission similar to this suggestion awhile back where I dropped a 60 ton rover on Duna. This was before ISRU was in stock so it didn't have that, but it did have enough fuel to land on Duna from orbit...

I think that was the original intent behind the devs adding monoprop to all command pods in the first place. But then somewhere along the way someone decided it wasn't a good idea for whatever reason (something about new players getting confused and frustrated when their kerbals ran out of jetpack fuel?) and kept the kerbals using EVA fuel, but forgot to take the monoprop out of the pods. There's a simple mod that makes kerbals use monoprop, but it really should be stock.

@SQUAD Are there any plans to do a full balance pass on the game in the future? Normally the main barrier to doing any major balance fixes to a game after 1.0 is savegame compatibility, but with this latest update and enabling exhaust damage you've shown that you're willing to break craft files if necessary to improve the game. Balance in this case primarily refers to parts and their stats and cost, and also the tech tree and career progression, but more generally also to the full game. I would also like to see the upgradeable part system actually used in game to keep early game parts relevant even after the tech tree has been fully unlocked instead of becoming obsolete and cluttering up the VAB/SPH. Also, I know you don't always like to comment on features in development, but are there any plans to implement an optional life support feature to balance the communications network that was added? The game was always skewed towards kerballed missions since you got extra free science experiments and infinite eva fuel (get out and push), and there's no penalty for leaving kerbals stranded. There's so many kerbal rescue missions that the funds cost to keep hiring new kerbals isn't even really an issue (not that funds themselves are even an issue past the first part of the game anyways). With the communications system feature probes got further penalties to control, making kerballed missions even more desirable. Life support would help balance this out by making probes much more desirable for long-term missions even with their drawbacks. It would be nice to get some feedback on this, but even if not, I want to express my desire to see the game get a balance pass and have life support and other features (something like anomaly explorer contracts?) implemented to aid in this and improve game progression.

If I'm reading the OP and the various dev comments correctly, it sounds like there are four parts to this expansion: 1. Mission Builder 2. Historical mission pack 3. New parts 4. Kerbal Parachutes The mission builder sounds like it's effectively an official implementation of the Challenges subforum. That sounds like a neat addition for the game and would nicely complement the base game as an expansion. It would also officially add a multiplayer aspect to the game in a sense. A historical mission pack could also be neat. Depending on how it's implemented (historical background on the missions) it could also be a great tool for learning more about the history of spaceflight. Will these simply be a collection of scenarios, or a standalone campaign-type system following the space race? Also, this feature seems different enough from the concept of the mission builder that I'm a little puzzled about both being included in the same expansion. New parts are always appreciated, but I would like to know more about how these parts will fit in with the existing part list. If they're primarily cosmetic parts for building historical replica rockets for the historical mission pack, then I can understand why they're including them in this expansion. If they're also meant to address problems with the existing parts list, then this effectively becomes a paid bugfix release instead of just an expansion. Either way, limiting new parts to a paid expansion will fragment the spacecraft exchange to some degree and make it more difficult to share craft universally unless you ignore all the new parts. I'm puzzled about the inclusion of Kerbal parachutes in the expansion. This feature seems to be unrelated to everything else mentioned about the expansion. The only connection I can think of is that it's potentially related to some of the historical missions, but overall this seems like a feature that should be put into the base game instead of having two different behaviors for Kerbals depending on whether or not someone has the expansion pack. Overall, I'm glad to see Squad branching out and adding some new gameplay features to KSP. I'll likely get the expansion (provided the price is reasonable) to support continued development, but I have some concerns about community fragmentation.

Doomed KSS Saved by Physics “Glitch” Today KASA announced a near disaster on the KSS (Kerbal Space Station) that resulted in an unexpected and groundbreaking discovery. A bug in the launch program of a recent resupply mission to the KSS put the Kygnus unmanned cargo tug on a retrograde orbit. The error was not noticed until an intern at the KSC noticed that the relative speed between the two was over 4,400 m/s as the tug was on final approach to the station. “I knew something was wrong when the intercept time was only 10s when the Kygnus was still 44 km away from the station. The only thing I had time to do was hit the big red button to alert the crew to abandon ship”, the unnamed intern said after the event. With barely enough time to open the hatch, the crew onboard the KSS abandoned the station, only to observe what until this time was thought to be impossible. “We didn’t have enough time to be scared. Our only thought was to get off the station when the alarm sounded,” said KSS crewman Bob Kerman. The cargo tug simply passed through the station as if it wasn’t there. “I was kind of disappointed honestly,” reported superstar kerbonaut Jebediah Kerman. “A collision at orbital speeds would have been awesome to see”. Immediately afterwards the Kygnus tug was deorbited to prevent future mishaps. After watching video recordings of the event taken by the kerbonauts, renowned physicist Albert Keinstein had the following to say: “This changes everything we thought we knew about the nature of the universe. It will take some time to fully understand the implications of this, but from what can tell so far, this looks like a “glitch” in the universe itself”. Rumors are already swirling about new mission proposals to further investigate this phenomenon.

I've been playing since 0.19 and there have always been a few people proclaiming doom and gloom for KSP, it seems to come with the territory of an early access/ongoing development game with an active forum community. As has been mentioned, right now is actually a pretty quiet time in the forums. Around the 1.0 release was significantly more lively. I definitely still have my own concerns regarding many of the decisions of Squad and the devs, but in the big picture the game is still fun to play and is still doing fine (although most of the game assets and part balance hasn't been touched at all since I started playing and really needs to be polished up...), and mod support is still going strong.

Lots of great ideas on here. I've not read the entire thread (just the first and last page) so forgive me if anything I'm about to mention has already been discussed. My thoughts on career mode: Going from what was described in the OP, for additional ways to fund your space program we could retain a form of contracts. Specifically, I was thinking that we could have (optional) launch contracts where you're given a pre-assembled payload that you need to get into a specific (reasonable) orbit (and eventually to other planets), kind of like what commercial companies like SpaceX do. To prevent this from degenerating into the current satellite contracts, the orbits would need to be reasonable and the payloads varied enough that there would be some challenge to completing them, plus enough of a payout to make them worth the time. The payloads could be chosen based on the player's tech level, starting with small communication satellites up to several hundred ton interplanetary vessels. The rationale behind this is that sometimes I enjoy building lifters just for the fun of it and end up slapping together a dummy payload just to have something (usually ridiculous) for my lifter to put into orbit. Conversely to reduce the tedium of launches, maybe there could be a system where you can pay a fee based on the size/weight/desired orbit of one of your craft to have someone else launch it for you. Maybe have a requirement that you must have launched a payload at least as big/heavy to the same orbit at least once before to unlock the ability to pay someone else to do it for you. Another career idea I've seen floated from time to time is the idea of a rival space agency. That could be an interesting mechanic, especially if you had to compete with them for world-first contracts (random side thought: world-first achievements should give rep, not funds, especially if our funding is rep based). How quickly they achieve things could be part of the difficulty settings, and they could launch their own missions so you would see their craft from time to time. Something like KCT would be essential for balancing this. Additionally, I've really enjoyed playing through the anomaly explorer contract pack in the past, and a cleverly set up sequence of increasingly difficult "story" missions could make career mode much more interesting as well. These could be set up so that the player can choose to ignore them and run their own space program if desired. This is not a new idea (NovaSilisko originally intended the Duna SSTV easter egg to be part of a "story mode" back when he was still a dev), but I think it would go a long ways to providing an overarching goal for career mode beyond exploring just for the sake of exploring. To improve replayability, the anomaly locations for the story missions could be randomly chosen when a new game is started so you actually have to go hunt for them instead of just getting the coordinates from a guide. Another random thought: instead of removing science points entirely, use them simply as a score counter in addition to the other experiment changes. Another thing that isn't mentioned in the OP but is still utterly broken in stock is the astronaut training. Training should cost funds and take some time, not magically happen because a Kerbal touched the Mun. Also, when hiring astronauts, they come with different levels of training based in your reputation (high reputation means more skilled astronauts are applying), and skilled astronauts cost more to hire initially. This would need to be balanced against the cost of training a less skilled astronaut. The skills also need to be rethought. For example, all engineers should be able to fix things regardless of their level, but an experienced engineer might be able to do it more quickly and possibly provide an operating bonus by making small tweaks to improve efficiency during flight. Anyways, just a few thoughts I've had. Now I need to go download the mods in the No More Science points list (plus the anomaly surveyor contracts) and give those a shot to see how the game plays.

When I first started playing the game I was in a similar situation as you. I had fun building random stuff, but I got frustrated and bored pretty quickly since I couldn't really get anywhere. Space flight is hard, and the game doesn't really do a very good job of helping you learn how to build and fly good rockets since it hides so many pieces of critical information from the player, and many of the preset vehicles aren't actually very good examples of how to build. I've heard that many of them even have intentional flaws that it's up to the players to find and fix, but this isn't really communicated to the player at all. I enjoy the building and mission planning aspect of the game more than the flying, and the one single thing that has most improved my enjoyment of the game is MechJeb. It provides a lot of useful information when building and flying rockets, and has autopilot functionality as well that can help you get your rocket into orbit and plan your maneuvers to get to the other planets. It even has landing autopilot as well. I've learned a lot just by watching how the MechJeb autopilot flies my rocket, and having information like TWR and dV while building has helped me tremendously in learning how to build better rockets. If you would rather do more of the flying yourself but still want the information readouts, Kerbal Engineer is another great mod (or just don't use MechJeb's autopilot). Another great resource is the many tutorials on YouTube, especially the videos by Scott Manley.

Are there any plans to add controller support to the PC version?

I like the idea of reusable spaceplanes and I think they look cool, but from a practicality standpoint rockets win for me every time simply due to the amount of real world time involved in spaceplanes. The cost benefit of having a reusable spaceplane is pretty much meaningless by the time I've actually unlocked the parts to build them (I'm usually drowning in funds at that point), but they take much longer to design and flying them to orbit takes significantly longer (and is more difficult and tedious for me), plus then you then have to fly them back and land them after delivering the payload. My time is valuable, and if I actually want to get a mission done, rockets are much more time efficient. There are times, however, where I choose to make it my mission to build a spaceplane to fly a dummy payload into orbit for the satisfaction of building a functional spaceplane.

So after seeing some of the crazy stuff Gag09 came up with in his thread, I was inspired to build this: As you can see, it uses Panther engines which give it great maneuverability for such a large aircraft and the afterburners give it a TWR > 1 on takeoff (without ordinance anyways). You may be wondering why there's a cargo bay at the front. The idea is to fill it with missile/gun racks so you can close it off when doing hypersonic speeds. The next step is to fill that bay full of ordinance. Here's the craft file for anyone who wants to give it a go. It's completely stock, although I did use Kerbal Joint Reinforcement to keep the part count down so you may need to add some extra struts to keep it from wobbling around. Craft

I would also vouch for this feature. As has been said, the simple, obvious way to do it would be via action groups like the ore containers, but I'm not a fan of the all-or-nothing proposition that dumps the entire contents of the tank. A better solution IMHO would be a fuel venting port where you can specify the dump rate (and have a nice little spray animation). Certain engines could also have this functionality in the engine itself (turn on the fuel pump/open the valves without igniting the engine).

I think that the whole notion of doing science experiments to get science points to unlock parts in the tech tree needs to go. There's nothing wrong with science points and having them unlock something in game, but linking them to the tech tree wasn't the best idea. What I would like to see is some kind of overarching set of missions to provide something to strive for. It could be tied into anomalies, where you initially find an anomaly on Kerbin, which leads to an anomaly on the Mun, and so on. For replayability, the anomaly locations could be randomized so that you have to actually put a scanner in orbit around various bodies to find them instead of just looking up the coordinates. These missions could be entirely optional if players just want to do their own thing, but have the missions provide some neat rewards along the way to encourage players to do them (along with some cool cinematics telling a story). Such a system would make the tech tree a means to an end, and the endgame could be focused on exploring and pulling off increasingly difficult missions. I also think that the tech tree should be unlocked via funds. Science experiments could give specific unlocks (for example, atmospheric analysis can unlock a bonus to improve engine performance in that flight region) instead of just providing points.

I would also like to see this in the game at some point. It could be implemented as an action group action available for the larger tanks, or as a surface mount part that destroys the part it is attached to. A demolition charge part could also be used as an advanced decoupler for more complex designs. Some kind of debris parts would also be a great addition to the game, could have a few different sizes that are spawned when a part is destroyed and larger pieces can break into smaller pieces (down to a limit to prevent too much lag). That way craft don't disintegrate into nothing when destroyed.

High resolution visual packs shouldn't put much (if any) extra load on the CPU. They will use more RAM and slow down load times, but after that initial processing there shouldn't be any additional overhead. What may add some extra load are additional fancy effects that require CPU time to process, but simply using a higher resolution texture shouldn't put any additional burden on the CPU (the GPU and memory bandwidth are another matter however). That said, I agree that the 950 should be perfectly fine for running even a heavily modded KSP with visual packs. The game isn't particularly demanding graphics wise so the goal is to take all the graphics load off the CPU (and the integrated graphics it shares its thermal envelope with) so it can focus on all those physics calculations.