Superfluous J

My math teacher told me this in high school. Back in the nineteen-mumbleties. Can a beaver build a dam out of logarithms? Cosecant! And you all thought your jokes (and your math teachers) were terrible.

I've been waiting for the gui program for the new tech tree mod to start working on my own tree*, but a lot of what you guys are talking about I want too. I want earlier access to a set of wheels (the crappy little ones are fine) and a docking port (I'm thinking Jrs). Early wings aren't critical in my mind but those two are. Its a a bit ridiculous when you can't do an Apollo style Mun mission until you've either sucked Mun of all science or sent ships to other planets. I don't see the need, though, for a community backed "officialish" tech tree. As you've seen nobody's going to agree on what goes where. The best we can do I think is to have a collection of tech trees so people can pick the ones they want. * I know there is a gui program but I've not had a chance to try it since really early on and it was a bit too new for my tastes.

They have been working on it. Very lightly. The "first steps" you're referring to are probably mostly things like making sure they're not writing code that assumes singleplayer, so that later when they add multiplayer it will work without having to rewrite the entire codebase. And what do you expect to see in the game to indicate multiplayer is on the way? It's sort of an either-or thing. You can't just kind of have multiplayer. It's not like in 0.24 they were going to add 2-player, and then in 0.25 we were going to get up to 4 player, and then in 0.26 we'd get 8-player or something like that. And they specifically said that they were going to release multiplayer AFTER the game was RELEASED. The game's not even in Beta yet (though if things work out the next update will be in Beta) so you've got - I'd guess - a year before you can expect to even hear about multiplayer being worked on in earnest.

I've given some thought to the solar panel/life support thing and while I agree that they're similar, they are not the same. Power generation is ubiquitous. It's used for everything in the game from turning wheels to transmitting data to rotating your ship. Life support is single purpose. Also, power generation is more than slapping a solar panel on a ship. Where should you put it? Should you use the kind that fold out and hate atmosphere (and hitting the ground) or should you use the sturdier ones that don't auto-aim at the sun? How many do you need and where should they go to both be functional and aesthetically pleasing? These are all design decisions. Also, you can literally get away with a single, weightless solar panel if you're careful, and that solar panel will provide power to everything in your ship. None of that can be said of life support. It's bulky, severely increasing the mass of the vessel to bring dozens of years of food (2 kerbals to Jool is likely 10 or more years worth of food). Or a magical 100% greenhouse that is likely just as heavy (or heavier) that doesn't have any of those design decisions put on it that solar panels do. Don't get me wrong. I really do like the idea of life support and feel like I'm cheating not having to care about it. However, I've used life support mods and frankly find it tedious and superfluous. Kinda like science. It would add complexity for complexity's sake. At least with science there are mods out there to take the drudgery away while still maintaining the purpose of science.

Actually it is a big deal, because if your tire ruptures in an unpatchable way on Earth you just hike to the nearest bike shop and get a new one. You can't do that if you're biking around on Mun. I agree that the tires would not pop due to air pressure, but the rubber would dry out, the air would leak out (and you can't just use your tire pump to keep it inflated like you can here because there's no air up there), massive temperature differences between the sunlit side and shadow side would cause who-knows-what problems... No, the wheels that the KSC invents aren't simple things that the rest of Kerbanity uses to drive to work every day.

Each of the (or at least most the) devs have their own, but the official one is @KerbalSpaceP

I may be being particularly dense tonight, but I don't understand either of these statements. Why is publishing YouTube videos worthy of a frown, and I did just publish (well, type) the flow chart on the forums in as texty a tutorial as I could.

So you want life support but you want a simple way to circumvent it? Sweet, a new part that is a must-include for every long-distance ship, that adds nothing to the game but a little extra mass.

You win. That made me actually laugh out loud. Au!

I follow this simple diagram: STEP 1: Have you unlocked the OKTO2? Yes -> Use the OKTO2 No | V STEP 2: Have you unlocked he Stayputnik? Yes -> Use the Stayputnik No -> You don't have any probe cores.

So long as every single part has a way to get 100% reliability out of it, I'm cool with this. However I'm in the same camp has HarvesteR, I don't want my Jool 5 mission to fail after 40 hours of gameplay because the internal D100 rolled double 0's and a critical piece of the return craft failed in a totally unfixable way.

If it somehow became impossible to get an in-game tool that told me the dV of every stage and the rocket in the VAB, I'd quit playing because the game would no longer be fun for me. I suggest this: If you're getting frustrated with the lack of information in stock, give KER a try. If you like playing less with KER installed, uninstall it and go back to stock information displays. Neither is wrong, or even inferior. It all comes down to if the game is more fun that way.

I read that as "you'll pick a tech node on the current tech tree, and then get science points until it's unlocked. Then you'll pick another one. You're not reading between the lines. You're drawing lines of your own.

I can't possibly come up with that, I like too many genres. Something like Elite with a more FTL interface and the ability to upgrade/expand/build your ship slowly room-by-room as you get money, with huge, galaxy-spanning factions (empires, republics, etc) that are playing a hidden RTS around me that my actions can have some affect on... yeah that's getting close to what I've wanted in a game for a long time. But that doesn't have anything to do with Kerbal Space Program and without that in the mix somewhere it can't be perfect, and tossing things from KSP into that would detract from the rest. So I'm gonig to need at least 2 if not a dozen games that can each be perfect in their own categories.

I thought HarvesteR's reason for not telling us dV was that it ruined the *magic*, not the *fun*. Still a horrible excuse to leave out what I consider to be critical information, but just what I remember him saying.

When you realize you've finally nailed the difference between "effect" and "affect" because of the Oberth Effect.

Not since the day I blocked all animated gifs in my browser have I been so happy to have blocked all animated gifs in my browser. Though now I'm curious what the gif in question looks like.

This wasn't directed at me but: If Kerbin had no atmosphere AND you were orbiting right at the surface (essentially skimming over it like a meter off the ground) then yes. It would be more efficient. Being stopped on the surface puts you at a HUGE disadvantage and having to carve through the atmosphere just adds to it. The reason the surface launch is expensive has nothing to do with the reason the orbit-to-transfer burn is the most efficient.

VAB = rocket height (and width but probably to a massively lesser extent). Essentially, you can't build a rocket that won't fit in the building. SPH = airplane width and length (and height but probably to a massively lesser extent). Essentially, you can't build a plane that won't fit in the building. Research Center = Unlocks whole tiers for ability to research. Maybe only through tier 2 in the barn, but tiers 3 and 4 become available on level 2. Etc. Astronaut Complex = Changes how Kerbal Experience works. Your guys don't get better over time on the farm, but in higher tiers they start gaining XP and then whatever that does. Admin Building = Tier 1, you get one administrator (your choice) who has one available strategy (again your choice). Tier 2, that administrator's other choice unlocks AND you get to hire a new administrator. Repeat through all tiers. Tracking Station = Distance you can see in the all new map mode with limited knowledge that won't ever happen. Launch Pad/Runway = Vehicle mass capable of being launched (and in those rare cases you stick it, landed)

Hey thanks for pimping my video One thing important to note, though: Clicking the node won't ruin it. DRAGGING it is what ruins it. You can click on it and modify the grade/normal/radial tuggies, and you can click the +/- orbit buttons, but if you drag it one pixel left or right it'll snap to the current orbit.

One of the flaws with the way the tech tree functions is that the tier-1 stuff is just as reasonable when you've unlocked the entire tree as when you start. The good part of that is you have a LOT of parts to use once you've unlocked them, and aren't just replacing the sucky tier-1 engine with the better tier-2 engine, then the better tier-3 engine etc until you're done. The bad part of it is that the Tier-1 stuff looks (because it is) just as advanced as the tier-10 stuff (is there a tier-10? I've never actually counted them). I don't have a problem with it. It just simply doesn't bother me and the alternative (starchy boringness in all aspects of the game) is extremely distasteful to me. Probably as distasteful as the concept of finding a perfectly workable rocket engine in a junkyard is to you.

I voted "Like it" though I'd have chosen a "Love it!" option instead. I think a sanitized, super-serious version of this game would lose all of the charm and most of the interest for me. I doubt I'd still be playing if - after a multiyear trip to Eeloo, my little guy didn't run like a goob all over the surface to plant his flag and collect his surface samples. I want exactly what this game provides: A rock-solid (in-progress) gameplay experience that is extremely serious in teaching you hard-taught lessons in practical space flight, wrapped in a Legoesque toy box with silly green aliens who cobble together rockets from stuff they found lying on the side of the road.

Wait, you mean you physically unplug and replug like your laptop power cable and the lights in the VAB flicker?

I've noticed it, and been annoyed by it but I just live with it. It seems to err on the side of powering your solar panels when the sun's down instead of cutting power when it's still up so I figure at least it's not screwing me over. I think it has nothing to do with the atmosphere and everything to do with the "is this area lit by the sun" check being flawed in some way.

As the someone referenced above, I thank you. My solution was frequently more of a problem than a solution