FlowerChild

Well, the issue I have with it is not the crazy contraptions I'm intentionally building to test the bounds of this. The issue I have with it is that it makes rocket construction (and flight) overall less compelling if you don't have to worry about things falling apart under hard gravity turns or what have you. I agree, the strut situation was out of control previously. But I'd say the stability situation is out of control now. Personally, I find the latter to be way less fun, as at least previously I had to think about stability in my designs, perhaps to an unreasonable extent, but I vastly prefer that to not having to think at all.

It's not a binary situation. I don't think anyone, even people complaining about it now (myself included), didn't want an increase to joint stability for certain things (like batteries acting as springs). It's a question of degree. Squad themselves said they didn't want to go overboard with it prerelease, yet that seems to be exactly what we got. If you scroll back to some of the screenshots I've posted in this thread of crazy designs that simply refuse to break, I really doubt you'd say they didn't go too far.

That's just bad game design whether you're making a realistic game or not. As such, it has nothing to do with realism, but rather with balance. I often get people that misinterpret what I do with my own mod as being realistic. It's not. It's about hardcore gameplay and balance, which will occasionally coincide with realism, but is not at all the same thing. Same with what you're saying above. Realism or no, what you're describing just makes for a poor game. And really, that's what I would argue about many features in this new update in having effectively removed a lot of what previously made KSP fun. IMO overpowered parts that become the only effective choice and joints that simply refuse to break under even the most extreme of circumstances (even if allowing for my new found love of extreme rocket-tricking) serve to make the game less interesting, and thus fun.

Lol...nice one dude. Appears I'm not the only rocket-tricking master out there Although, I think you would have gotten more points had you had had boosters strapped to the ends of the arms to send our friend into a nice spin mid-flight.

I'm pretty certain we should also be getting some kind of bonus points for ground tricks, at least when then tied into air combos... Ultimately, I want to lip-trick onto an asteroid, pull a pose like the above, release, then pull off a few more tricks on the way down, all in one combo, but I suspect I'll need more practice.

Bam indeed! Even deleting the ARM folder can't put a damper on my mad rocket-tricking skillz!

Now look what you guys have done... All this negativity has made my latest trick rocket sad

I know right? But excuse me as well. You just gave me the idea of using the Klaw to perform lip-tricks off of asteroids I've pulled into orbit. Man, that combo simply will not stop.

That totally misses the opportunity for trick combos on the way up though And BTW, that isn't really a payload up top in my screenshot. That's one of the new large tanks, full (all the tanks are), for extra bendiness and thus trick potential. If you want to be a big-time pro-Kater, you need to know these things, and attaching an extra 41 tons of dead weight to the top of a 1.25m max height stack is a surefire way to drive the fans wild.

Well, I think I *may* have found the fun in .23.5 that I was afraid had been lost... I think a pretty decent mini-game can be made out of trying to break ludicrous rocket designs now while in flight. Throw in some Tony Hawk style combos like for the hang-time I'm catching in that screenshot, and we've really got something.

Couldn't agree more OP. 0.23.5 essentially broke the game from my perspective, and took it from extremely fun to distinctly non-fun in a single update. People used to admire the stuff Whackjob did precisely because it was crazy and difficult to pull off. Now lifting insane weight is trivial, taking a lot of the skill out of the game, and the fun along with it.

I would disagree. I think most kids watching a cartoon would assume that rockets have nosecones, fins, and are shaped vaguely like rockets for some kind of reason, even if they don't know what it is, and ones that have those attributes fly better than ones that don't I'm in no way a realism advocate, but I do think that the current aero model does terrible things to suspension of disbelief, removes a large portion of potentially interesting skill-based gameplay, and in many cases is extremely counter intuitive.

Thanks, but the only mods I use other than my own are DRC and PreciseNode (tip of the hat), so I'm set at present with the stock maneuver node improvements making the absence of PreciseNode at least a tad easier to bear EDIT: And it turns out PreciseNode has been updated, so that's taken care of too

As an aside, after doing fairly extensive testing on it while porting BTSM to the new Squad release, I believe that DRC for 0.23 works fine with .23.5. I also released that about 18 hours ago, and haven't had any players report problems with DRC, so I suspect it's pretty safe to use as is. I'm right there with you on this one. With the new super-stiff joint reinforcement and uber-rocket parts, the game really needs it more than ever IMO, as it's become trivially easy to get insane payloads up into orbit.

Are you sure you aren't just going too fast? With DR that will heat you up whether you're going up or coming back down, and those new engines are very powerful They've been working fine for me in my tests with .23.5.

Nah, just referring to ModuleEnginesFX as opposed to ModuleEngines, so no, no third type Was a remaining question mark for me as I hadn't tested it yet, and just wanted to mention the difference there in case you hadn't spotted it yourself yet. Glad to hear everything appears to be working right.

I've done some *very* preliminary tests with it installed on 0.23.5 and it appears to be working at least at a surface level (temperature readouts on parts present, no errors thrown, inflatable shield inflating, that kind of thing). Granted I still haven't performed an actual reentry with it, so please do not take that as a statement that it's working fully At the very least though, I anticipate there *may* be problems with the new engines as they use a different kind of engine module than the old (same as the SABRE actually), thus I'm not certain if the heat correction code in DR for engines will apply to them without an update.

Loss of bone density. Long term radiation exposure. Other long term health effects. Basically all the stuff modern astronauts and cosmonauts are learning the hard way. It's not just five years sitting around. It's five years of prolonged torture followed by what is an almost certain death

I personally find drogue chutes really help for pulling a Duna landing for the very reasons you mentioned. Yes, they're annoying in terms of being inline only, but I find a well placed hub part can take care of that.

On the topic of the tech 8 Aerospace node, I agree it's a bit weak, but all the value lies in the Aerospike at present. The reason for this is because with the thrust limiter changes in BTSM, if you're ever planning on returning anything from Eve for example, it's basically the only way to do it given it's the only engine capable of producing significant thrust in an atmosphere that thick. I find it also comes in extremely handy as an engine for the first few stages of manned interplanetary vessels given its thrust to weight ratio in vacuum can't be beat. So yes, while I agree the node could use a value bump, don't discount it entirely just yet

More solar panel ideas in case you run into further placement concerns: In the above, that was just the first of a three part ship I was assembling, and either end of the array detached when it was all completed (they were just for delivery and maneuvering during assembly) but you get the idea. Cool arrangements are often just a docking maneuver away

Cool, thanks for the explanation. Will ponder how I can arrange things to not make that feel like such a priority, because yeah, the 5 other techs will likely be far more beneficial in the long run. As Sciuris mentioned above the Rockomax Hub available at your current tech level is really the key part to making effective superstructure for the solar panels you currently have. The solar panels are also an incremental improvement, as are many of the techs you have access to right now (except the sensor array nosecone mind you, which is rather valuable when you first start probing the atmospheres of other planets). Will leave this here though in case it gives you any ideas:

I'm a little surprised you consider the solar panels such a priority man. Can you describe your thought process a little more there? Yes, they are lighter, and yes they have sun tracking, but they don't produce any more power than the ones you currently have, and I have a hard time understanding why you'd consider them to me more valuable than the 5 nodes at your current tech level you could buy for the cost of that 1 alone. For manned interplanetary missions I could see them being a priority to help reduce weight, but not for probes, and you're really not at the point yet where manned interplanetary missions will be feasible anytime soon.

Yup, this thread reminded me to that I had intended to get back to your post in the BTSM thread and had not gotten around to it. Will be doing so later today over on that thread to address it on a point by point basis so as not to bring your mission log thread too off topic here On this one point though since it wasn't mentioned in your other post: I honestly have my doubts that 0.24 will include money. If you read over the recent Squad dev journals as of late, there's been many a mention of contracts, but none of finances. As a result, my guess is that they're doing a first pass implementing contracts as one-offs that have no lasting impact on play, and that money will be a part of a later release. But yes, regardless of when it hits, it will likely be a lot of work to rebalance things. Looking forward to it though, as I think it will provide a lot of additional depth.

Wow man. I noticed the link to this thread in your sig today and decided to check it out, and I just finished reading every word of it. Very nice job, and invaluable to me to be able to see the thought process of a player working their way through the tech tree for the first time like this, especially in such detail. I'll try to answer a few of the concerns that have come up during your play through. My apologies for not responding to your lengthy message about them the other day, but I had a lot on my plate at the time: -Part models: I don't disagree with you, however I'm not an artist (more of a designer and programmer). All part models should be considered place-holder, and the batteries in particular that you mentioned I'll likely be revising the next time I implement an otherwise save-breaking release, as changing models between versions tends to mess up people's designs. Those were some of the first parts I put into the mod, so I've learned a lot about how KSP works internally since then and have a number of additional options at my disposal that I didn't know about back then (like part-welding to create distinct looking parts out of stock models, which I use on the life support canisters later in the tree). -Vessel focus not switching on EVA: That actually seems to be a sporadic bug that I've yet to be able to reproduce. If you manage to find a situation where it happens 100% with a certain set of parts or what have you, please let me know, as it will go a long way in helping me correct it. So far, I haven't even had it happen once in my play, which makes tracking it down exceedingly difficult. As a side observation, the larger fins you unlocked along with the first heat shield would have made the Keel Haul based design you abandoned much more controllable Anyways man, thoroughly enjoying these mission reports. Thanks for taking the time to put them together, and if you don't mind, I think I might link to these in the OP for BTSM so people can get a better idea of what's actually involved in play before downloading.