Superfluous J

"Hard Mode" in video games is supposed to make the game harder. "Hard Mode" in KSP makes the game more of a grind It does not make any single thing harder. At all. Period. All it does is make you have to do more of the easy things you already did. If you want hard extra grind mode, then you get hard extra grind mode, and your buildings cost more. If you don't want your buildings to cost more, don't play in hard extra grind mode.

I think I can answer the first one. Your periapsis is too high. That "80m/s to capture" assumes you're coming in with a periapsis down around 100km over Eve's surface (not far off the atmosphere). Down there, you get the full benefit of the Oberth Effect and each m/s of dV in your thrust really packs a punch on your apoapsis.

Whenever I toss my fairings the rocket goes down in mass by several tons. It encourages me to try to figure out when best to ditch them.

I get your point, but I wasn't quoting any statistics. I was simply making an educated guess. Saying that nobody from Pewdiepie's audience would buy the game is at least as skewed as saying thousands of them would.

The thing is, these two things together encourage strongly a "one mission at a time" space program. And don't get me started on KAC not being stock... I can't imagine running a far-flung space program with resource gathering bases on several planets and moons, and several science stations here and there each full of scientists, ad then going to the astronaut complex to pick up a new pilot and seeing that she'd cost me half a million dollars.

True. Atmo surveys and part tests are essentially cruft. I ignore them. If they capped at the max altitude that a plane can be expected to reach (instead of about 2x that) then they'd be far more attractive for me as a player. You don't need to fill those stations. Just send them up empty. That said, I totally agree with you. I cheat money in, hire who I need, and then cheat the money back down to what I had before. And I don't feel bad about it in the slightest.

The man, it's you. This should be stock.

I'm not a marketer, so I don't think that way. My math and logic holds, no matter how much you think I'm trying to use it to spin people into a buying frenzy. I also stand by everything I said except I should have said "tens of thousands" instead of "thousands." But technically that's still "thousands," just a lot more of them than people usually mean when they say it. Why do people find it so hard to believe that there are viewers of Pewdiepie who haven't tried KSP but might like it, and could be moved to try it once they saw him play? Squad ARE marketers, and they think it was worth it.

I went with the spirit of the question, but not the actual question itself. KurtJMac did not make me join the forums (at gunpoint or otherwise) but he did introduce me to the game via his videos, and then I tried the demo, got hoooked, and bought the game. Not long after I joined the forums. - - - Updated - - - Pewdiepie gets millions of views. If 1% of his viewers buy the game based on his video, then Squad makes thousands of sales. The vast bulk of established KSP YouTubers' audiences already own the game.

Yeah this happens on SOI changes. I'm not sure but I think it may be a 1:1 thing. Every SOI change will get it. I don't know for sure because I'm a civilized person and use KAC to warp to instead of stock

I've done before what others suggest you do instead, and used drop tanks in my first stage to drop. The idea is to have enough TWR to launch, and then when your outer tanks are empty (the outer aux in your first diagram, that don't have engines on them) I drop them, lose mass, but lose no thrust. I don't use it anymore, because it goes counter to what seems to me to be the best launch profile: Keep TWR from going too high in the lower atmosphere. Dropping mass but keeping all your thrust (or in your case keeping all your thrust longer than asparagus would) just gives you more TWR low in the atmosphere. Which - for me at least - means spinning craft at best, and scrubbed missions (and open slots in the roster) at worst.

The surprise here (for me at least) was that the game actually models (or at least approximates) this. I, too, assumed all that mattered was the front of your rocket.

From a gameplay perspective, 2 of an item should never be across-the-board better than 1 of another item. If you're going to do that, you should at least go the other way. The Mk2 can should be lighter than 2 mk1 cans, or be in some other way better. I kinda like the idea that the Mk1 can would not survive re-entry. Too bad we have "crash tolerance" and not "G-Force tolerance." Get the lander can over 4 gees and it crushes.

I wasn't aware of it, but I'm not a huge fan of the regular window. I'm simply lazy and it didn't bother me enough to change

Yay this has become a "is realism fun?" circular discussion. Realism is not necessarily fun. Fun is not necessarily realistic. Lack of realism is not necessarily fun. Lack of fun is not necessarily realistic. Some people find things fun that others don't. People agree with others on some things, but not on others. Nobody (but a masochist) wants a 100% fully real universe in any video game. If you think you do, get your mouse arm ready for Jeb's toothbrush mini-game and Bob's "Find a neighbor to take care of my cat" puzzles. And remember while you're controlling Bill at the grocery store, you need to get ground coffee beans because the grinder in the canteen is broken. You forgot to sit idle at your computer between 8am and noon on Tuesday, when the repair guy was supposed to show up, so the grinder will remain broken until next week, when you are taking time off work to make sure you're there. But that's okay, Val is on her way to Duna so you've got 67 more days until you need to do anything in the actual game anyway. Nor does anybody want a 100% fully unrealistic game. If the rockets randomly turned into yellow submarines and the VAB melted into a puddle of water whenever there was an eclipse of Jool (because it switches places with Minmus every 17 days), it would get old pretty quick. What everybody wants is something between total realism and total non-realism. And everybody - EVERYBODY - puts their mark in a different place.

Yes it would be much better if they vacationed in private.

Yeah I need to install something. I just haven't gotten around to one of those yet. I hate to say it, but I'll probably go with Contracts Window +. I just love being able to hide and sort them.

That is darn impressive. I wonder if you could bring less fuel by swapping the command pod with a lander can, and if it would lower the total cost. Probably not.

The problem isn't so much realism vs fun, it's that everybody seems to think that "I don't like that" == "That's stupid and you're stupid and you should feel bad for being so stupid." And that's not a problem with KSP, but with the Internet and with Humanity as a whole. EDIT: (I reread this and saw it could come off wrong. I didn't mean that you were reading into what others said. I mean that others, instead of saying that they didn't like it but good luck with your endeavors, instead tried to trash talk you into oblivion)

Emphasis mine. Thanks for starving us of information, Squad. Actually based on the rest of what he said, I'm pretty sure he meant it was essential that he could use the autopilot to do everything for him. Which is something I'll be happy if Squad starves us of forever.

I actually don't know. I used to have horrible problems back in.. 0.21? 0.20? Whenver I started using -popupwindow. I've never ever run the game without it since, except for some framerate tests to see if not doing it helped. It didn't so I went back to it.

Yes. For my personal enjoyment, I much prefer having dozens of missions going at the same time, with KAC telling me when each one is ready for my attention. It feels more like I'm running a space program, and not piloting a space ship. For YouTube, I think I'm going to always just run one thing at a time (though that one mission may have several sub-objectives) because it can get pretty confusing, a month or more later, when I'm returning to a ship that nobody - not even I - remember the purpose for.

I made a tutorial video on it. It was in 0.90 so ship itself may not make it to orbit anymore (or may do better, who knows) and the launch is the old "45 degrees at 10kM) but the concept is the same. If you watch it, pay particular attention to how I launch at a specific time, based on the orbit I'm trying to hit.

Probably. I tend to ditch my fairings at about 45-50km though, and I don't want to wait through all they shaky cam until I'm there.

I finally installed and then used it! I used it to fit a Duna ship into the fairings that make it aerodynamic enough to get into space. I gotta say, it's really cool to toss the fairings and then unfurl the ship. I'm looking forward to doing more.