HeadHunter67

It's definitely not with RCS Build Aid - I use those together just fine.

I'm not seeing this "flame war" you speak of. I see people proposing an idea, and others explaining why they feel it would be of little purpose in the game. No one's been insulting other people, unless there's someone here who's so in love with the idea that any challenge to it is a personal offense. In a game like that, it does make sense. For one thing, it's a different type of game - the whole idea is that it's about long-term strategic planning, and time is one of the "currencies" of the game. You don't get to custom-design rockets, or fly them on your own missions. The "something like that" indicates you haven't played it and aren't aware that the only common factor is that they are somewhat related to space exploration. BASPM and KSP are about as similar as Minecraft and SimCity. But since neither of these things is implemented in the game yet, it's currently an irrelevant example. If and when those things happen, then time becomes a currency. Until then, making things take time contributes nothing but pointless delay. ...so you're saying that players shouldn't be able to do anything else while awaiting a ship's construction in the VAB? Wow, you've made the proposed idea even less fun for the game. Is there any good reason why Mission Control should be suspended from duty while the VAB crew builds for a different mission? I think anyone who's played both could tell you that they're nothing alike. KSP is not about "the simulation and management of a space agency", it's about building and flying rockets. BASPM is not - you don't design rockets, you don't control them in flight, you simply plan missions and manage a budget. KSP is not about a "deep" experience, it's about having fun, and silly green men, and lithobraking and spontaneous interpretive staging and explosions. It's not fair to say that people "want restrictions", as that's far too general. People want some sort of structure and boundaries that are appropriate to the type of game in question. What's been proven, time and again in video gaming, is that people don't want to wait needlessly just for the sake of verisimilitude. Ask any Star Wars Galaxies player about the 10-minute wait at spaceports if you want an example of what needless waiting accomplishes.

I've already addressed the flaws and shortcomings for every other possible interpretation of the intent. Either you're making people sit around and wait, or the wait can be easily bypassed or obviated. Neither contributes to enjoyment of gameplay. Neither encourages "planning" or time management in a game where time is a meaningless currency. Why does a wait of two days, or 2 weeks, or whatever, matter if you can time warp through it? I'm still not seeing anyone really stating what this concept is intending to actually accomplish, or how it contributes to gameplay.

I'll give the new one a try. Seems to take up a lot more space - 42MB instead of less than 5MB for the 0.5 version. Why's that?

Fair enough - but does it honestly matter? So they begin their new calendar on the day they get into space, and it's not long after that we see some other jury-rigged contraptions make it into orbit. But if the calendar date is that important to you, feel free to accelerate time in your game until it's at a point that you think should be sufficient - as it's only going to matter to you, and it's unlikely that even the like-minded will have the same exact idea of how long it "should" take. Regardless, if the clarification of the OP's original statement is to be believed, it wouldn't add days or weeks - apparently he was only asking for VAB time to pass as real time. Hooray - so that first flight happens on Day 1, 00:02:00 and by day 3 they're still doing all that other stuff. Is that the important change we're advocating here, or are you hoping for something other than what the OP says he wanted? Then what's the point? Why devote development time and resources to a "feature" that most people apparently wouldn't even notice, and that honestly wouldn't change gameplay in the least? I won't dismiss the possibility of this mattering at some point in the future of the game - but right now it would change nothing and affect nothing. Users already have the means to pass time unnecessarily.

So "imperfect understanding of science" it is. As Jack and Sojourner have pointed out, Mars does indeed have clouds - as I already stated.

More like 54 kilometers. Check your math.

If the answer is "then just time warp", it makes little sense to add such a feature. The only people that would care are those for whom launch windows are a real issue (then again, if you miss a window, you could as eaily time warp to the next, as well). Sounds fine on paper... but since we can time warp, and there's no consequence to zipping through weeks, months or years, it's not really a "meaningful" choice. Neither one is currently a factor in this game. Time can be advanced to whenever your next window needs to be, and money does not yet exist. Perhaps at a later stage of the game's development, this might turn out to be a useful idea.

Why not? Mars does. Or are we letting an imperfect understanding of science determine how things "should" be?

Thanks, Wayfare! I'll give that a try. Hopefully it will work.

If you mean time passing in the VAB as it does in the "outside" world of the game, I don't have a problem with that. I think it was actually the intent of the developers to do so, but hasn't been implemented within the KSC yet.

That's correct. It's not difficult to do, it's just that it's nicer when the mod developer does it, for the sake of uniformity. Ph34rb0t hasn't been on for a few weeks but I'm sure that when he has the time, we'll see results worthy of the HBI "brand".

If only that were the case - but not on the designs I've used. Perhaps for dinky little probes that don't do jack, that's enough - but I tend to like my missions to accomplish something. And, you know, the engine isn't the only thing that needs power when you're doing a scientific mission. If ion engines could fulfill the role for which I need them, I'd use them. I've tried them and didn't like them. It's nice that they work well enough for you, but that doesn't help me in the least.

What would be the point in making it take time? Any game designer will tell you that adding delays never increases a player's interest. I've seen many games that started out with some artificial-but-sensible delay in something, only to discover that making a player sit around and wait means they choose to play something else. Those delays were reduced and often eliminated entirely. If you feel a need for rocket building to "take time", feel free to build it and then log off for a half-hour. When you come back, you can pretend your little green men built it while you had lunch.

That is why, instead of mounting the RCS flush against the hull, you put them out on girders. This increases how much torque you have available. It doesn't improve translation per se, but it should reduce the rotation. Likewise the need for a powerful reaction wheel on the tug. But I do agree that really large work may require a larger tug. Next time I load up the game, I'll try to cobble together something that shows what I mean.

This is exactly why I don't use them. A small probe with a small ion engine should not need a 4k battery and three Gigantors to power the engine... yet that setup is only sufficient for a few seconds' thrust - which is negligible.

Since Subassembly Manager is not going to be updated for 0.22 (under the mistaken popular notion that the in-game subassembly system will do everything that could), is it possible to get the MOMS assemblies into the game somehow? Or can this be updated please?

Tugs really aren't meant for maneuvering using engines. If you're that far away, a payload assist module (like the MOMS OAM) is a better choice - though that's not a bad example of what a tug could be. A better tug for short-range work (such as maneuvering station components into place) could be better built with an RCS fuel tank, a probe core or RGU, the most powerful reaction wheels for that size, a battery and some means of power generation, and then place a balanced set of RCS thrusters out on girders for extra moment.

Science over time just isn't going to work, no matter how you do it. Either a player can time-warp his way to unlocking the whole tech tree, or you can award a "trickle" which is so insignificant as to not matter. We already have the problem of most science equipment being so far into the tech tree that it's nearly obsolete by the time you can use it. The Science Lab in 0.23 is likely going to be a better way of doing things - it allows players to process the science collected elsewhere into a more potent form without landing, from what I gather. And there's nothing preventing a player from putting other scientific equipment on a station and gaining benefit from processing that. I agree that inline Goo containers are a good idea, and if the 2m "Science Sr." contained a materials bay, a goo sampler and all five scientific instruments, that would be reasonable.

That's not entirely true - the NovaPunch LES uses a NanoCone - a small RCS unit atop the booster, for orientation. First of all, it's wise to include your rocket motor in the Abort action group to "shutdown engine". In fact, that should be the first command in the sequence. Second, and more importantly, your capsule has torque. You can turn it during the abort sequence and it won't be flying straight up any more.

32 extra bits equals about 4 million times as much potential address space, if I'm figuring correctly - But the operating system itself then becomes the limitation. The maximum you can use on a Windows 7 rig is 192 GB, and 512GB on Windows 8.

Mr. Manley has been seen to have used MechJeb at times, too.

It may not ever see the kind of volume like GTA, CoD or WoW... but do not underestimate the pop-culture significance of million of players. That's easily attainable. World of Warcraft (with about 7 million subscribers), for instance, only seems so massive because it's on a subscription model - Minecraft is bigger, with 12 million copies sold for the PC and 33 million copies sold across all platforms. There's no reason KSP couldn't achieve the same level of success - especially since other indie games have blazed the trail and proven it can be done. The added denefits of educational applicability and content delivery cannot be underestimated.

I personally don't believe that's possible, because the goal of such a game is simply for fun, and if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong - regardless of whether you're playing "vanilla" or modded, regardless of plugins or clipping or whatever. If clipping is what you need to replicate an authentic design or make it work just so, then go for it. I personally don't use it that often, but I couldn't give a flying fig about what others do. Doesn't affect me in the least, and who am I to tell them how to play?

And the spot on Jool isn't (exactly) Jupiter - after all, Jool is green, and the spot on Jupiter is a reddish-brown. So you kind of got my point, even if you didn't realize it, and even if you unknowingly reinforced what I was trying to say. If it ruins the verisimilitude for you, you're allowed not to use it. But some people don't mind it.