Synapse

This is a pretty simple suggestion for docking, to view the map and adjust your orbit more accurately, for cool EVAs and for anything else in particular, allow a 0.5x physics warp by using the Alt + < while at normal time.

It's difficult to decypher what is going wrong... is your problem only with unmanned flight? Why are you trying to fly without SAS?

>Install a mod that messes with aerodynamics >Can't steer rockets >Complain on forums

Well it looks like Squad is going ahead with Multiplayer and choosing the route of entertaining the market over producing a good niche product.

That seems like shrugging the blame off of a bad feature by allowing you to customise it. I'm not particularly interested in a game that is bad, but is good after you customise the hell out of it.

I for one am annoyed at scrolling through liquid fuel tanks + engines, jet fuel + engines and RCS... please do a little change and move RCS fuel tanks into control category and Jet engines and fuel into their own separate category along with the aerodynamics parts. It also might be an idea to have an electronics category for batteries, comms, solar panels etc and then a separate category for parachutes, ladders, landing legs? It just would feel more intuitive this way.

There are more things in Heaven and Kerbal, Koratio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy

I'd like to see more player customisation besides naming their space agency and rockets. For example, you could have features such as: Choose a starting strategy/mission statement for your Space Agency Nicknaming Kerbals - Ie. Bill "Reckless" Kerman Customisable space suit colour for new recruited Kerbals Paint rockets....or choose a RGB value which hues all fuel tank parts (more simple to implement) Choose your Launch window through the launch screen (for example morning, noon, evening, night launches) Add a "Mission" value to ships which can be viewed in Map view (Pathfinder 2 Mission: to land a probe on Duna) Programmable lift off and reentry sequences based on altitude?

I agree that the information is misleading. Parachute mass*drag should have a seperate drag indicator and if necessary you can show the drag factor (*1,*0.5) multiplied by the mass... Hopefully further updates will allow for more types of parachutes (slow drag ones included)

Mk 1 Hitchhiker module. Some kind of rocket cargo bay for storing rovers with a folding out ramp.

Trying to make my own triboosters made the VAB have a siezure...

Thanks for the feedback, I agree that phase 1 should be possible manned or unmanned. Regarding phase 3, should it be vital that the crew are returned to Kerbin? On the one hand, this does encourage more complex return missions, as opposed to suicide one-way trips. But is this something we should paternally encourage or leave open-ended? I have mixed opinions.

I've been playing a number of crowd-sourced games recently; Prison Architect, KSP, The Forest and a few more. What I've noticed is that in general the development of these games seems to stall or become distorted after the initial buzz around the games' release. To take an example, The Forest was pitched as a SP immersive survival game and it was clear from the beginning that the developers had no plans for multiplayer. However several releases later multiplayer is taking the majority of development time. On the one hand this is what sells; a multiplayer sandbox like Day Z is easy to hit the market, but as a result the original vision, that immersive oculus-rift SP experience, has been lost. Hence when I see people asking for multiplayer development on KSP my heart sinks a little at the idea that the original game might almost be 'abandoned'. Now let's look at Prison Architect. The Kickstarter model of funding where players could become prisoners in game is great, no doubt about it. But the last few updates of PA has focused on adding new features including snitches, logic circuits and mod support. Now logic circuits was primarily pushed by some Minecraft players, but its inclusion in the game is sloppy and doesn't fit with the simple premise of Prison Architect. Snitches seemed unnecessary as well. Overall the focus on these crowd-developed games is on new features to satisfy a bored playerbase, rather than polishing a game. There are advantages and disadvantages to these additions. Let's look at mod inclusion. Mods are a great way to revive a bland game or keep players (investors!) interested, but they don't actually impact on quality of the game you are selling. Some mods break the game or render it completely different. Each mod appeals to different players giving you choice but also no consistent "KSP experience." KSP has a very mod-friendly sandbox type physics model and the modding community is healthy for the game's survival but not for its overall development as a product. As a modder I can tell you some games are easy to mode, like those using Quake engines. But the original games were the cause of their success not the modding utility, which was largely accidental. I'm thinking of games like Jedi Outcast, Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto. There are exceptions like Halflife 2 which was largely successful due to the modding community. Is this the direction that games are taking? Is it good or bad? My request for SQUAD is to focus on fixing what is there before working on new features. The career mode needs work and I've detailed some ideas in another thread, and there are loads of ideas about improving the gameplay. I was very pleased with the SAS fixes but the textures of the sky for example are grossly outdated and the music could do with work. Multiplayer is a bad idea to respond to the multiplayer thread, and I don't think "there's a mod for that" is the proper response to problems. So I am a little disheartened when I read about resources and new systems, when the basic career and the overall game (textures, parts) needs so much work. Those are my observations anyway I'd like to know what the community thinks.

Tri-phase Exploration Contracts I am sure I am not the only one who feels that the exploration contracts for each body are over far too quickly. The Mun/Minmus missions can be done almost straight away and then you're stuck doing the procedural missions, which while I'm sure have their place, shouldn't be the bulk of activity (or at least players should have a choice). I therefore propose that these missions are expanded and developed into three stages of exploration. This will make the missions more realistic, give us reasons to return to the bodies and open up the potential for proper exploratory missions rather than a 1-phase landing and return. Rather than being consecutive in the sense of choosing the missions, I think you should only be able to complete stage 2/3 once the prior stage is complete. Therefore it is possible to complete all three phases in a single mission, but would encourage multiple missions to that body if funds are low. I also include photography missions instead of EVA report/crew report , I know several people have suggested photography as a form of science in the past and this seems like a natural inclusion. The progression also allows for a unmanned phase 2 mission but requires phase 1+3 to be manned. Admittedly the manned mission to Eve would be difficult to accomplish, but I see the point of the three phase model as making exploring planets nonlinear in the sense that you will be scouting Eeloo probably before you launched a manned mission to Eve. Anyway here is the proposed format. I see the phases as follows (I must stress these are comparative rather than actual fees/science): Explore Minmus - Phase 1: • Take a crew report within space of Minmus - 10 funds, 5 science • Orbit Minmus - 10 funds, 2 science • Photograph a landing site on Minmus - 10 funds, 2 science Completion: 40 funds, 15 science (total 70 funds, 24 science) Explore Minmus - Phase 2: Must have completed Phase 1 • Land on Minmus (must be within 10km of the photographed landing site to complete) - 20 funds, 5 science • Transmit/recover scientific data from the surface of Minmus - 20 funds, 10 science • Photograph the surface of Minmus - 20 funds, 8 science Completion: 40 funds, 15 science (total 100 funds, 38 science) Explore Minmus - Phase 3: Must have completed Phase 1 + 2 • Plant a flag on Minmus - 35 funds, 10 science • Recover a surface sample from the surface of Minmus - 30 funds, 15 science Completion: 40 funds, 15 science (total 105 funds, 45 science) Explore Minmus - completed! Grand total: 275 funds, 107 science

Using map view I found you can actually navigate using the stars. Sucks however that you'd need to do this.

No, I've walked 10km on 4x time warp. The problem is that rover parts aren't unlocked by the time you get mass exploration missions on the Mun. And secondly there is no minimap.

Surface report mission, rover parts not unlocked yet, no minimap, 4x time warp 2 mission elapsed hours....

Why these haven't been implemented in the game yet I don't know: 1. KSC cam - a camera on the ground at the VAB which tracks the current flight 2. Decoupler cam - to replace the chase cam at cool staging moments 3. EVA cam - self explanatory 4. Manual cameras, which the player can add to satellites and then cycle through, zoom and take screenshots Also minimaps...

The solution to spent stages is to enable a timer (say 10 in game minutes) where discarded stages are still physics-capable. The solution to constant orbits below the atmosphere when not player controlled, is to use a simple formula rather than a complex one to calculate drag. For example, just 3 atmosphere formulas 1. high drag 2. medium drag 3. low drag

How about instead of unlocking "ideas" you actually unlock "kits" which contain all the parts needed for certain missions or mission types? I see this as being a fix to the debate about planes before rockets or vice versa. Here is how I envision the parts being unlocked, I haven't charted every part but this is a general overview of where these 'kits' would sit. Tier 1 - first flights Basic Aircraft Kit - contains jet engine, an intake, landing gear, a basic wing + winglet, basic cockpit Basic Rocket Kit - contains the Lv t30, mk1 cockpit, decouple, and a couple of the small fuel tanks, and the small parachute Tier 2 - to take you to LKO Expanded Aircraft Design - replaces the aerodynamics pack which basically implements a bunch of wings and the other cockpit and ASAS Orbiter Kit - contains the lv 909 + t45, longer fuel tanks, radial parachutes, few structural parts, radial decoupler, basic SRBs Unmanned Probe Kit - some small probe cores, basic solar panel + batteries, tiny engines + fuel tanks (basic) Tier 3 - Munar/beyond missions Advanced Aircraft - the turbojet, advanced intakes, some mk2 parts Pioneer Kit - mk2 cockpit, some larger tanks, the skipper, larger SRBs, landing gear, folding ladders, docking ports Advanced Probe - larger probe cores, 1x6, 2x3 solar panels, larger batteries, toroidal fuel tank Rover Kit - unlocks wheels, structural bases + seat for rovers Tier 4 - interplanetary travel Spaceplane Kit - advanced plane equip including the rapier engine, cargo bays Interplanetary kit - the nuclear engine, mainsail, largest SRBs, hitchhiker modules, large docking ports, RCS Superadvanced Unmanned - Xenon gas engines, the large solar panels, the grabbing claw Tier 5 - Superadvanced Rocketry Unlocks the cluster engines + superheavy fuel tanks

I'd like to see engineers going on EVA to upgrade things. The obvious contender for me is batteries/pods, by improving their efficiency engineers can improve the battery life. Solar panels go along with this. I wouldn't like to see the engines modified if I'm being honest. If Squad implemented heat tiles, then engineers could repair broken heat tiles in space for multiple reentries.

Tier 3 defeats the point, this should be unlockable pretty shortly after the LV909, but before the Skipper. The idea being that during the early stages of LKO exploration or first trip to Mun you can take along a scientist

SAS needs to be fixed so that when you enable SAS it defaults back to hold position, this will stop many landers going straight down into the ground. I think a pilot training facility would be good, but boring? Spam a few clicks to add a star. I'd much rather have a kind of course where you can fly through rings or something to gain a level of experience.

Why doesn't this exist? Would allow you to take your engineers/scientists into LKO/Mun far more easily before unlocking Mk2 pods, and adds to the flavour of having a seperate "pilot" piloting landing craft etc.

That's not the point really. It doesn't make sense to exclude your pilot either; mk1 hitchhikers mean that your pilot can ferry a scientist into LKO or to the Mun, or an engineer to repair landing legs, far earlier in the game without relying on mk2 components. It allows them to gain experience equally with your pilot, as a space team, rather than solo operators.