CosmicScientist

Well, Harvester mentioned that there'd be a penalty for failing and a reward for succeeding which, to me at least, implies some sort of economic system since that's the only way I can see that they could do it.They didn't appear to confirm anything with implementing a budget just yet. All I listened to with the interview was that contracts set up like quests will be available. The Tuesday devnotes from here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68489-Devnote-Tuesdays-The-0-24-Update-Goals-Edition only state how these contracts will be implemented hopefully in 0.24 and onwards, nothing on budget inside the game. Edit, might as well include the specific bit in a quote:

Ever since the early implementation of Career mode, I hadn't picked up that side of the game because it just appeared to be in a stage of limited sandbox eventually turning into full sandbox for a reward from visiting different places. Now however I'm looking forward to playing it after hearing the plans for contracts and how they'll fit with your current progress in Career mode. Thank you Squad for working on this, I'm very happy to know there will be more reason to head off to each celestial body and do specific things rather than to just pop by in the (hopefully!) next update.

No, wrong, baaaaaad. They have already stated that it'll all be available as and when the update comes to sandbox mode, campaign will be the only mode you'll have to research properly in. Also did parachutes come from rocket science? No, I think it came from airplanes and the need to bail out due to war and it would be stupid to give you rockets but not parachutes "Here, kill your Kerbals or do powered landings until we've researched this". Also this can't break saves alone, even if it was "You have to research X before you can use Y in constructions", it'll just be locked in the VAB/SPH, there's no reason why having a decoupler in your save now and then after the update you're told you need to research it doesn't mean it'll go poof from your craft nor mean your save will be buggered. Even if it was, do you think you couldn't go into the config or otherwise and set the corresponding tech value to 'Researched'.

Thank you, I'll try out both of your suggestions when I get the chance.

Something I've found slightly restricting when making interplanetary probes that don't require refueling/docking is when in staging if you set up one atomic rocket as the central piece, when it shoots off its covering, that can smash into other parts of the rocket and mess things up such as destroy other atomic rockets placed radially. I do sometimes try to get around this with just have atomic rockets placed radially but it puzzles me why I seem to only find this problem with the atomic rocket and I don't understand why the coverings need to be shot off so fast as to put a dent I can't buff in my crafts.

I have no clue what lasers have to do with this but with enough docking ports, you can build a ship from 'salvaged' pieces in orbit.

Wow, that's fantastic, seriously beautiful design.

When launching a space station, somewhat small-mediumish in size in one go with a lifter, I sent it up and was in the map view to make sure my apoapsis was in the region of 70-80km, oddly everything went silent so I tabbed back into rocket view and several fuel tanks and all the active rockets were gone, as if something deleted them mid-flight, no explosions. I think the Kraken took pity on me to leave my space station in tact... until it re-entered atmos and crashed back down to Kerbin due to all useful rocketry being destroyed.

This is why Minmus is there, it should not be gotten rid of and it reminds us that the game isn't entirely in favour of duplicating our solar system and having a second moon on the starting planet gives more to do closer to home for those who aren't quite interplanetary adept. Also I don't understand why the system needs to be changed, it seems fine as it is, I'm looking forward to the asteroid belt and other gas giants they're looking to include. If anything if the system was rerolled, I'd be sad to find what I've built and sent elsewhere... not on what they were before or perhaps wind up with a save broken and unusable.

This is how it is, I've play a fair bit of KSP and I've wound up doing almost every if not every bug Danny has found and then some, before or after seeing him do it on YouTube. I still can't for the life of my Kerbals figure out how to make them survive landing on their heads but it's not like I ever need to know... I'll just keep waiting a day and crossing my fingers for them to come back.

Oh, good point, silly me, Swift's right.

I'd rather not, my first time in space with Jeb in the demo was brilliant, my first satellite that had enough to get to and orbit the Mün when it was meant for LKO, my first Münar landing, my subsequent ones, all the Kerbal fun that came with all of them, my rovers on Duna and the Mün that flip over and crash, visiting Minmus, going to see my first landed probe with Jeb, running out of jetpack fuel to not be able to make a return trip, rescuing them, learning more about space faring. All of these are great memories and I'd likely have similar experience if I started anew with no recollection. But I'd have several problems, I'd likely have seen YouTube videos of KSP now highlighting oddities and achievements I've already performed and earned, I might not do as well as before, it took me a while to learn what an essential struts were, I don't want to do that again, I'd have seats to play around with Kerbals instead of learning to make probe buggies where the Kerbals hang off of the smallest ladder pieces, I made quite a few good looking ones, regardless of their usability, I always had fun testing them and then accidentally in a Kerbal way, mess up the mission when using them, I wouldn't experience rovers tipping over because of the lacking of probe SAS so I wouldn't have had the fun of trying to design around something that just makes rovers too easy to bother with on the small scale for me now. I love KSP and the memories it's given me, I love what I've done and achieved, I don't see why I'd want to reroll it.

That is really nice but for future use, please remember the Spacecraft Exchange forum section is where you post your spacestations/ships/rovers/buggies/crafts: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forumdisplay.php/20-The-Spacecraft-Exchange to share your lovely screenies here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24533-Show-off-your-awesome-KSP-pictures%21

That's quite a nice build, ever tried using it on Laythe? Also this is where you post pictures of your crafts for future reference: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forumdisplay.php/20-The-Spacecraft-Exchange

This thread might help you, a little way down will have a screenie of a possible landing spot: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/44795-Landing-spaceplane-on-Laythe?highlight=laythe+equator I personally don't know what you need on Laythe, I haven't gotten there yet with any Kerbals so I don't know what strength jet number you need compared to on Kerbin, just try it out, if you don't want to risk it, you might as well cut down only when you're comfortable with design. And yes I'd recommend a drogue on Laythe, I don't recall its atmospheric thickness but you might as well take a weak parachute for precautionary measures.

First one, yes but I last remember not having additional flags to plant after recovery, if you re-enter a command pod, you gain that vessel's flag type to plant depending as to what you set the flag to, so in essence, you can plant infinite flags as you can use infinite mono propellant with a Kerbal's jetpack. Second one, try it, you really don't need much to just dock two rovers together at the KSC to find out. My guess it's the one you're selecting when it's docking that overwrites the other and I have no clue about what happens if you undock. Oh and just in-case this is interesting to you, the date of all flags planted will be shown in the tracking station.

Well that is an interesting idea and it would be best if you could do it just using electricity rather than rocket fuel to get most of their orbit done with an initial speed-up but to give you an idea that might work for a little time, make a vehicle which carries to fuel, has airplane wheels on it (so you don't have to worry about a top speed) and rover wheels so you can drive it around to get the right position when the airplane gear is pulled up. If your hill is flat enough, you can rocket your way up it hopefully with enough stability and get most of your orbit done and only need to correct it at your apoapsis.

Not to try and say it's balanced, I'd prefer it myself if jetpack RCS was a little less powerful. But how heavy is a Kerbonaught compared to a small ship? Whilst it doesn't quite seem right with how much propellant they store in their backpacks compared to their size and total mass, it feels like standard RCS power to me if you were to get a flat prob body, put a small propellant tank on it then two of the single-direction RCS bits on the bottom and you'd go relatively the same as a Kerbal when comparing mass with how I find. I don't quite wind up with this problem when travelling between parts on the same ship/station/docked group, moreso when I need to travel inbetween ships that are a fair number of metres apart I try to earn a better velocity to get to the other ship in fair time without using timewarp because I don't trust it and like to think I can do things without it, I go off course by more than a hundred metres past it instead of smacking into the ship at high velocity but I'm learning to cope with it and that I need as much time slowing down as I did speeding up because vacuum of spaaaaaace.

First Münar landing, Jeb and I think Bill crashed into the Mün's surface because I thought I'd be able to slow down faster. Then whichever was left in the orbiting rocket, Bob or Bill, flew back to Kerbin. My second Münar landing however had three seperate Kerbals, Ronvis and two others, I wish I could get Ronvis in my current game, he was the first Kerbal I had to walk on the Mün. So I didn't have enough fuel to get back up to the rocket to get back to Kerbin, so after playing around and crashing one Kerbal into the Mün's surface because I didn't realise how much they like to go poof at high speed, I decided to send a rescue craft, 'twas Jeb being the sole pilot. Then the second Kerbal I got on the Mün, damn it, how can I forget their name, died when I tried to use the lander on its low fuel to get to the other lander and crashed into the surface with that... And according to my screenshots, the rescue vehicle then needed a secondary rescue vehicle, this time piloted by Bill and so Jeb was the first Kerbal I had to crash, die, successfully land, walk and return alive from the Mün. Bill didn't leave the landing craft as I feared I'd wind up killing him in the process, again. All that and neither a quicksave nor quickload, I didn't know they existed in the game and I've still never needed them.

Well we still haven't heard if this person has MechJeb or other mods installed, you never know, it just might not be a vanilla problem, but then again it might be, which is why we need information!

Not only that but to be a sour grape myself, the Live from Mission Control subforum seems under loved when someone decides to skip it for posting directly to here.

And didn't you notice no matter how long you keep their helmet lights on, they never run out of battery life? I think you've got it.

I would like to dispute this, in the comics in two areas, more notably this first one as the second is a joke for Star Trek and not the KSP game: Now whilst the comics aren't entirely canonical with Kerbals... okay fine, grey area, I don't know, no female Kerbals then? Anyway, there are female Orks, there isn't necessarily... a reason for this if I recall correctly thanks to how Orks die, produce spores and if the Imperials or whomever else aren't doing their jobs right by burning the area, the spores make new Orks, blehbleh, there are female Orks best to my memory, just not really in the front line.

Whilst, yes, that seemed to be how they wanted it done, hopefully in future patches to the current rockets, it'll be done similar to the larger, white radial engines compared to the smaller radial orange ones as to the mainsail to the skipper, you get more thrust, just worse efficiency. So yeah I guess they are a bit too good for how the rest of Kerbal engineering works, the ant appears just barely better than RCS for landing with. I haven't really tried to use the orange rockomax, stacked or radial to land on anything as small as Minmus or smaller before and with the small payloads I associate the smaller rockets with, the ant ones always provide me with more than enough to land and return on. It might eventually boil down to the campaign where cost comes before engineering when it comes down to landing on the smaller of the moons, as neither ant comes with a gimball so perhaps intended for use with small, low-cost probe landers and rovers on fairly low gravity bodies without atmospheres?

To be honest I don't believe stock craft files coming with the game are absolutely necessary. I never used any of the ones already there except the spaceplanes, mainly just the silly one with the wings that flap when they catch drag. I got the demo, did the tutorial and got to space without even learning how to pilot except just how the staging worked, saw the stars through Jeb's eyes through the little window in the command pod hearing the music start that I didn't know was in the game and filled with happiness that something I made off the bat got up there, even if it wasn't an orbit, without knowing what I needed to do, got up there then wound up with a very Kerbal ending to my first venture into the game, exploding on the ground, the tutorial in the demo didn't like me adding a parachute. "Ooo a parachute I'll need this to get back down safely..." "NO, add the engine, I'm not letting you do anything else, you can drag and dry to plonk on that parachute all you want, I won't let it attach". If any of the stock craft can be either a SSTO or have the capacity to even get into Münar orbit, I think some of the magic will be lost, whilst I'd also complain that the player should get to orbit under their own steam, one of my friends can barely manage it - if lucky, let alone dream of reaching the Mün a second time so I don't know what to do with that. All I think is that if you give someone a rocket and tell them "This will get to orbit", they'll probably pilot it fine and do what it can do or possibly learn how to pilot a rocket the best way up and out into an orbit around Kerbin, but it won't be theirs and they won't learn how to make their own. So probably imperfect craft that can get to space is all I can say might be good but none cross my mind that I would have batted an eyelid at when I was too excited to make my first satellite to go around Kerbin as and when I bought the game after I played the demo, finding it had more than enough fuel to get to the Mün and go in a 45 degree orbit and I didn't even know the magic of struts at that point.