Superfluous J

I always think of electricity (and all resources) in the game as, you're the boss who doesn't know anything about this stuff, and the engineers are explaining to you how many batteries are needed. You ask why you can't have 3 batteries and instead need 8, and they start talking about voltage and amps and kilowatt-hours and your eyes glaze over. Then one particularly savvy engineer comes in and says "See, this battery here holds 200 electric charges. We need 20 electric charges to send a science data. We need enough energy to send 800 science datas at a time so we need to hold 1600 electric charges." Then you feel all smart as you approve the extra batteries.

There's a setting to turn that off. It's among the first things I do on a new install. There are 2 settings. The one you changed will - if you leave it on - totally kill your probe when you have no connection. At least you have limited control! The setting you want is on the Basic settings screen, just turn off 'Enable CommNet'. Then functionality is back to pre-1.3 days where you could do anything from anywhere.

I've wanted this since I first built something offworld. Unless an experienced modder says they're doing it, I'm assuming it's either impossible or so close to it as to be practically so. And I love Extraplanetary Launchpads. I'd just love to have the VAB interface on the surface of Mun.

No, the terribly inaccurate part of that movie was how the arctic ice shelf sank when they shot it with rockets. Well, that wasn't the ONLY terribly inaccurate part, just the biggest one.

While technically dual wielding, I only play the steam one. Copied, of course. Steam just handles updates SO much better than the store.

What is a "satellite"? Does it need a probe core? Power production? Batteries? Antenna? Science? Or can it be a decoupler? "How many parts can your computer handle on one ship"

Of corese someone has to make a joke.

PC, both Steam and store bought.

I don't see the need for Mun and Minmus, as the only way to lose comms at Mun is to not bring any antenna, and the only way to lose it at Minmus is to bring the weakest one with the lowest tracking station. I like the log graph, but would label the axis with more rounded numbers and put the more exact numbers on the planet lines.

Without knowing what you need, sure that sounds fine. Though for full coverage you'll need at least 2 more, 120 degrees before and after that one in the same orbit. Note: if you have ground stations turned on in the settings, you don't need a communications array at all.

I've always wondered that. Also, why the node isn't called "The Claw."

In my never-ending quest to find a mod cocktail that is both fun to play and challenging enough to be rewarding, I tried Realistic Rescale, which ups all planets 3.2x and all distances 6.4 times, and slows rotations 4x, at least on Kerbin (Not sure of other planets or moons as I've barely gotten to space yet). I also realized that contracts are now boring to me, so I'm doing an old fashioned Science Mode career. I *just* got into LKO and it was fairly rewarding, though time consuming both up and down. I'll keep up with it though and hopefully continue to enjoy it.

This seems to be a pretty good recap of the past couple years. Though you forgot "get out before the whole thing collapses."

Sadly I'm not really playing much any more. Lots of real life and other games taking up my Kerbal time. Also, part of my plane problem is I don't really want to fly planes, except maybe on Laythe, Duna, and maybe Eve.

After hearing it has Axial Tilt, I tried Principia. Then I stopped trying it. For how much I love Precise Node, I seem oddly incapable of enjoying any time in KSP without the maneuver node widget. Other than the UX, though, Principia is pretty cool and I hope to play it some day for reals.

We are literal polar opposites when it comes to this. I can rendezvous without maneuver nodes and dock without RCS, but even with all the aids in the SPH I can't build a plane worth taking further than the island runway.

Note: SSTO =/= Reusable. All it means is that you can get into orbit without staging. You can build a pretty simple SSTO early in the tech tree with (top to bottom) a parachute, Mk1 command pod, decoupler, multiple fuel tanks, Swivel. It's ugly, inefficient, anything but reusable, but it's the first and only SSTO I build in every single career, specifically to clear out 2-3 of the first 4 contracts (launch, space, orbit).

I'm the opposite. Ever since Verniers were introduced, I've stopped using regular RCS. Oh there's another one. I never use struts anymore, ever since autostruts were introduced.

Make sure your bottom stage has less than 3000 m/s dV.

Sounds like you installed the parts, but not the DLL. How often do you install mods, is this your first or 50th? You should put the entire contents of the zip into your GameData folder. Either it'll be zipfile.zip\gamedata\stuff or zipfile.zip\stuff. "Stuff" should all go into your Gamedata folder.

I don't know my nephews seem to love it, and have for over 2 years now. ...on the Xbox, BTW.

Which, from what I can tell, didn't really go all that bad for anybody. Though I'm not really in the loop anymore on Minecraft. But nobody seems to be talking about how ruined it is.

I won't leave LKO without mods, except for some exceptional challenges.

If you don't mind mods, check out All Y'All. It adds this without needing or using action groups.