Wallace

When I sent up my Gooyager 1 probe off into deep space, I placed the goo precisely on top of a Stayputnik. It's tricky to put things exactly on top of a Stayputnik, but if you turn symmetry to 4 and looks straight down, when you move them towards the centre the 4 goos will eventually overlap exactly, you then turn symmetry back down to 1, place the goo and it will be exactly on top. It looks pretty cool like that too.

The best Kerbal related XKCD was 'The six words you never say at NASA'

My first ever one was called UPer 1. I didn't save my first 2 career mode rockets, but my third was called Mun Disaster.

If you fly very low and slowly when you drop them, then they could reach the ground and be safe before you get 2.5 km away. You'd have to be pretty low though, and pretty slow for the chutes to work before it hit the ground, it would still be easier than landing, when I tried landing a research plane in the desert it ended up like this:

a capsule 1 tank and one engine shouldn't rip off the parachute, sounds like something is going wrong unless you made a huge rocket. You can get to the decoupler without doing a launch tho, if you make a rocket that is just a pod and an aerial you can do a crew report sat on the pad, then hop out and do eva report and a soil sample on the launch pad and get enough science points like that to get the next tech level.

One way to balance it out would be to have it so repeat experiments don't work for the same mission. So, eg, put a probe in LKO, transmit a goo experiment, then that goo box is done for that location, it won't give anything till you move it somewhere else. Launch a second goo probe to LKO and that can do another goo experiment in LKO. Then you could say have a bigger laboratory part that needs to be manned and powered that can transmit repeatedly from the same place, so that would make it so space stations have an advantage over unmanned probes other than just crew reports, and an advantage over just sending the tiniest capsule possible.

Identifying 2 or 3 or 5 different biomes on the Mun does not require any searching at all, looking down on the Mun, there are 4 very obvious giant craters which you can easily aim for, likewise on Kerbin, there's a huge desert, oceans, mountains, icey poles that are very easy to see from orbit. You only need to do this intense searching when looking for the more subtle variations, like mountain vs highlands, or dessert vs badlands, or on the mun, highlands, midlands and polar lowlands, which are not so obvious that there is a difference just from appearance.

If there's no visual way to tell the biomes apart, like on Kerbin, then there really should be some way to determine them. I mean, we know the big craters are their own biome, and can see them on the map, and the poles we know where they are, but the rest all looks grey, so how can we tell what part is a seperate biome? It would be nice if I could look down and go, this land below looks different, out the kerbal goes to report on it, same as on Kerbin, if not, then there should be some other kind indicator. I think the idea of some kind of mapping device would be good, adds a new thing to do, it could be made fairly heavy and a huge electric hog so it's more of a challenge, and put it a decent way up the tech tree, so you have to go mun blind first and see what biomes you can find, then return to bag the obscure ones after finding them with the scanner, that would give you a reason to go back to the Mun and Kerbin later in the game to seek out the elusive biomes you missed.

He is in that episode where he goes rotten after he dies...

I've had waaaay more fun playing KSP with low level tech and no mods but the happy joy of science points than I did with all the end level tech and mods. Also, I think we need to say more when we like something rather than only complaining, seems like when people don't like something they go on and on about it, but when we do like something, we don't say anything.

He quit the space program and lives in Colorado now. Think about it, he wears orange, always has his hood up like a helmet, and if he dies he comes back. Kinda has the same proportions as a Kerbal too.

I liked the old one when deployed but it was terrible stowed, the new one is pretty cool tho.

Some people were complaining that there's no advantage to setting up a space station, but with it taking 73 transmissions to drain a Goo and Bay of all it's science, then I can see how it pays to stick around, however a simple goo+bay satellite could do the same, but there does seem to be an advantage to sticking around.

Would not really work with the females being tiny as they have to produce the offspring, unless kerbals are also like seahorses and the male gives birth. However having thought of the idea of extreme sexual dimorphism... maybe the Goos are female Kerbals! :O *extreme surprised face*

On my first Mun mission, during launch, the nuclear engine that is supposed to take me to the Mun drops clean off for no reason, I decide, meh, I'll keep going as see what happens, the stub of the final stage takes me to the Mun and I circularise using the lander engines to tow the ruined return stage which is now just a floating fuel tank with RCS, I land, plant the flag, mess about, then I head back up and rendezvous, or course I've spent too long on the surface, the lander has a solar panel, but the return stage only has a bettery and it's totally dead. Furthermore, the lander has no RCS to save weight: commence the RCS-free docking to the powered down tank. Now previous to this I've only docked once, so this is my second ever docking. Result: nailed it, lander comes in butt-first and docks the the drifting tank perfectly, flies home, victory, even splash down within view of the KSC.

I wouldn't send the goo somewhere to deliberately die, however I don't mind stranding it in space, it seems happy enough most places. There were a couple of tragic goo deaths, my first goo flight the canister fall off the capsule when the parachute kicked in which was sad, poor lil goo.

I find the worst things for guzzling power are reaction wheels.

I've not tried activating the science thingys in sandbox yet, does nothing at all happen or do you still get the cute lil messages? I think it would be cool to see how many mickey-mouse-fun-bucks science points you could get in sandbox, and the messages are cute and funny, What would be usefull in both modes would be a science log, that shows all the successful experiments, so you don't need to remember what experiment you have done in which places.

If you plan your return to land in a different kerbin biome each time then you can bag extra points with an eva and sample when you land. Also, EVAs in LKO takes into account the biome below you at the time, so you can keep hopping out the capsule as you go round your orbit.

I like how you phrased that, accepting the inevitability of them breaking off.

If I recall correctly, landing gear is pretty heavy compared to the powered wheels, so you would not gain much by using it.

here's the smallest non-lame rover I've made: I could ditch the communotrons, lights and sensors and it would just be: Okto2 probe core, probe battery, solar panel, 2 cubic octagonal struts, 4 dinky wheels. The battery depletes fast once it gets rolling as it never gets full sunlight and slows to a crawl when it's empty so you have to stop and timewarp till it charges. I made a nuclear version with an RTG under the bottom, with 2 RTGs it can run at full blast without depleting batteries. It's super stable, and can flip itself with the okto's reaction wheels, I've only broken 1 (out of about 12 landed) while driving, and that was down a near vertical cliff, I made it halfway down then made a mistake and tipped it a bit too much. It also only needs a oscarB, a torus and a 48-7S to get it down onto the mun.

I didn't have any problem with launching goo into space, but now that I see how cute the goo is, I don't wana hurt it! I'll still launch it into space of course, if it's good enough treatment for a kerbal, it's good enough for a goo! I'll bring it back safely though, I pwomise!

I have trouble getting a large enough SSTO into orbit to take extra fuel with me, I can only get my SSTO to the Mun by refuelling in LKO.

I never managed to do the land the Kerbals on it's head trick sucessfully, all kerbals I've tried to do that with went splat, I use EVA parachutes now when I send them in planes.