Kerbart

Only 3 Kerbals are shown in the "IVA cam" view, but I would not be surprised if all 16 actually get drawn first. It wouldn't be the first clunky implementation in the game. If that's the case, hopefully it will get fixed eventually.

Without challenging the inconsistencies, they are there and they are annoying... Just because Kerbin is on average about 10× as dense as Earth doesn't mean all materials are 10× as dense. Perhaps Kerbin has a neutronium core, or something else ridiculously heavy, and the mantle, crust and surface are made from similar material as Earth. I'm sure the fine folks here will shoot hundreds of scientific holes in that, but the point is that materials don't have to be 10× as dense. Now, to reiterate; that doesn't explain or fix the inconsistency...

It doesn't float that high, and those large radiators and solar panels create enough atmospheric drag. From what I understand its orbit is reboosted on a monthly basis, so I don't think it would take that long to re-enter by itself. If that happens it'll be a long shallow path, creating a large debris field, and without any control where it is going to impact.

Exactly! It's not like we don't have real world examples for that either—large moving structures like supertankers, bulk freighters and large container ships (some might even consider "large airplanes" but when you compare an Airbus 380 to a large ship... nah.) Of course, the scale of a Death Star is a bit larger, but if we're comfortable with the Empire building on that scale, then we can also be comfortable with them designing on that scale. It's not like they're limited to slide rulers and paper, after all.

I agree that the lower tier models are more than decent looking and totally do not get the "ugly" comments. But to be fair, the T2 Tracking Station is not something that lasts long in career. I'm fine with the concept of scaffolding and "under construction" -- if anything I wouldn't mind if a few other buildings would take that approach.

Can you change the subject line? Or did you decide to review a squadcast from a year ago?

Oh? That's an option? Never noticed it! It is definitely not there on my iPad (neither Firefox nor Safari). Maybe it disappears after marking an answer, but I cannot recall doing so.

@Warzouz “liking” your post because you took the effort to link each part name to the KSPedia. A lot of work but it makes it so much easier to figure out what you’re talking about (a lot of posters don't seem to want to go the extra mile of making it easier for their readers...). Thank you! On the subject; things have gotten better but I agree, there are a lot of idiosyncrasies. Personally I like to see the lander cans have a lot less heat resistance. The description clearly states that they cannot survive re-entry and they shouldn't do so as such. Or perhaps only make the Mk I vulnerable and change the description of the Mk II; it would explain why the “2” is more than twice as heavy as the “1”.

Just tap on the triangle. It appears that on some platforms that is the way to upvote an answer. @Red Iron Crown; sorry for quoting the entire post but that seems to be the only way to retain context (I hate doing it, but alas...)

If you ever played career on Easy you would notice that the tech-tree is still configured backwards, when it comes to learning KSP. Learning should be an experience where experimenting is encouraged in order to learn things, and where those experiments are used to receive encouragement. I don't think it's a wild assumption when I state that for most beginners, their primary milestones will be (a) making orbit and (b) landing on the Mun*. Neither aren't easy (with zero knowledge) in KSP, especially in Career mode. Orbit... ok, that can be done. But the Mun? With 30 parts or less and a severe mass limitation on the launch pad? Of course, you can grind science and funds to upgrade the buildings. But where's the learning experience in that? One can argue that players have to learn to build efficiently as well, but in that case Career mode has the priorities backwards. First, teach players how to reach space. Then focus on efficiency. Currently in career mode, players are facing many hurdles that are fun challenges for experienced players but limit progress for starters. An FLT-800 tank is in Tier 5. Of course, you can reach the Mun with an FLT-400. I'm sure there'll be hordes of players who are now going to announce that they reached the Mun on a half-empty RCS tank using a gravity slingshot around Minmus, or whatever. But those are not beginners. The tech tree doesn't offer intuitive progression. It doesn't offer guided progression. And that's ok; it creates a challenge that is fun to overcome. But it does not, in my opinion, create a good environment for learning how to space. * yes, we all know that it's actually easier to land on Minmus. But it's further away and there's that pesky plane change. Unless one sticks to training videos, newbies will shoot for the Mun.

Well, that’s one of the problems... Career mode is not exactly suitable to learn the game. It seems more like a challenge mode mode for experienced players than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, when you start playing KSP it would seem as if Career mode is the way to be gently introduced to more and more parts. And that is mostly true, except for the word gently. That is something that Squad needs to fix, in my book.

I think it would be good for Squad to take a few steps back, consider why there is a career and science mode and then overhaul the system completely. When you think about it, what we have right now doesn't make sense. There's three modes to play: Sandbox, Career, Science. What's the difference? Sandbox gives you immediate access to all goodies. Science puts up a bit of a challenge, Career makes it really hard. That sounds great in theory. Challenges! Heroic missions! We all know how it turns out in practice; a lot of grinding. Depending on what your intention of career mode (and to a lesser extend science), the current situation can be very satisfactory or very frustrating. How can career be interpreted? An introduction to KSP. You start with simple parts and learn how to "Space" gradually without being intimidated about all possible choices and options. I think we all agree that Career is about the worst way to learn about KSP (sandbox is much better), but with zero information one can easily think that this is meant as a "teaching mode" for the game. A challenge to unlock the science tree. An incentive to visit the Kerbol system in a challenging way. Of course, lots of the technology required to do so is in the upper tiers of the tree, meaning that by the time you have the technology to go to Duna you've also unlocked the science tree and you're already done. Provide a framework for progression in the game. The tech tree doesn't really support this in a sensible way. An incentive to run a space program on the cutting edge of efficiency. How cutting edge depends on your career settings. The last bullet seems to cover Career mode the best right now but it's as far from "career" removed as I can think (except for the "career" of your space program, but that'd be an odd choice of words). What I would like to see as that it is simply addressed by providing a whole bunch of game modes: Sandbox. Anything goes. Introduction. A "career-style" mode with a tech-tree geared toward learning the game. The tree would be fairly shallow and unlock large patches of technology like "rovers", "space stations", "interplanetary" and so on. Contracts would mainly, if not completely, be "world first" contracts -- achieve orbit, achieve manned orbit, etc. Historic. A tech-tree addressing historical progression (simple unmanned probes, manned, advanced unmanned, landings, etc) Adventure. Starting with a full tech-tree (or not?) the player has to complete a quest (with our without side-quests). Quests can be as simple as "visit Eeloo" but could also contain complex logistical operations like taking an ISS-style station apart and moving it to another planet. Adventure mode would obviously be a wonderful playground for modders/"mission builders" Economy. Basically the existing career mode. Perhaps with an additional incentive of earning an x-amount of funds in a y-amount of years? Right now we're talking about Career mode and fixing it to make it fit what we think career mode should be. We need to stop doing that; we simple need a more flexible system with various game modes, preferably in ways that are easy to mod.

I might be wrong on this but isn't Unity taking care of all things rendering in KSP? So it'd be up to Unity to provide that kind of functionality?

I get the impression that Musk is doing SpaceX because he wants to go to Mars, period. SpaceX helps because (a) it makes a lot of money and (b) it drives down the cost of going to Mars. It's not like he thinks going to Mars will bring in large profits for SpaceX; it's more that he wants to go there and SpaceX is the way to do that for him. Whether the project will flop depends on what the goals are, and to what extend those are achieved.

I suspect that the autopilot uses a PID controller (and perhaps you can even set the process variables but I haven't dug into that). It tends to react slow when your flight direction is close to what you want the autopilot to do, and more aggressively when the difference increases. So, let's say you pitch over 5° for every km of altitude and you have a constant climb rate (I know, I know... but just to keep things simple!). In the beginning your're going straight up, now you're telling your autopilot "pitch over 5°" at 1000m. Not a lot will happen. At 2000m you tell the autopilot "pitch over 10°" and now the autopilot will steer a bit more aggressively, as your flight path has pitched, say, only 2°. By the time you've pitched over 5° you reach 3000m and you tell the autopilot "Pitch 15°". By now it starts to turn rapidly, and you flip. Thinking about that, maybe I should alter my script with simply telling the autopilot to push a couple of degrees beyond the flight path, instead of sticking to fixed values.

The fun part about analogies is that you can twist them to your advantage. You don't have an illness, but there's this brilliant medicine on the market that will lower your risk of developing dementia (pick any bad disease of choice) later in life. Problem is, you will have to take a dose now and it's so expensive that, in order to do so, you will have to sell your house and live on the street. Would you do that? Or risk illness later and keep paying the mortgage and food bills? The problem is more complex than "would you pay to save humanity from extinction." The chances are very small and it means not spending money on other things that offer a much bigger payoff when measured in saving lives per dollar spent.

For one, the issue could be that your rockets are not top heavy. A rocket is like a dart; the more forward the center of mass is, the more stable it will be. The longer the distance between the fins (at the back) and the center of mass, the longer the lever is for aerodynamic forces to provide torque to keep your rocket flying straight. In short: Put fins as far backward as you can Try to move the center of mass forward. That doesn't always mean moving stuff forward; it also means limiting heavy stuff (engines) at the bottom.

My favorite is “transmit science from xxx orbit.” Because alt-clicking an MLP in orbit and choosing transmit science does not count as transmit science.

Ooooh, that's a bug? I thought it was a feature. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why they had implemented it like that, but as it worked like that version after version I thought it was supposed to work that way.

Aaah, the number of times I've trashed perfectly good Science because I intended to “close” that dialog...

“And for your moon mission, Bob, this is what we came up with” “Haha, it’s been a while since I read up on aerodynamics, but that doesn’t look like something that will handle well during re-entry” ... “Re-entry?”

One can only wonder how a documentary How the Columbia Crew Could Have Been Saved, based on the documentary “Gravity,” would look like when broadcasted by the Discovery Channel. Given the seriousness of the subject I'd suggest a very restrained production... perhaps done by Michael Bay?

Don't be too hard on yourself, most people wouldn't even know what that means. Most people outside this forum, of course...

I'm too lazy to look up the link, but when you google it you can find some interesting reading on it. The TLRD was basically: The STS-107 mission had effectively to be scrapped as the crew would go in an ultra-low activity mode to preserve as many life-support resources as possible, to extend their duration in space NASA would meanwhile have to rush another shuttle ready for launch (The Martian illustrates quite well what the risks are when you go down that route) Two shuttles cannot dock each other in space, so you'll have to EVA the Columbia crew over to the rescue shuttle. Added difficulty: no space suits. Additional difficulty: putting on a spacesuit, unlike what is shown in the movies, is apparently not a DIY operation. So getting that last person out of the airlock is another challenge. And doing EVA's that are not practiced is also a big uncertainty. I'm sure there would be ways around it, but in the end transferring crew from one shuttle to the other would be a logistical nightmare with plenty of options for disaster. Columbia was filled to max capacity. As earlier stated, at that point in time shuttles where not able to fly without crew. And I suspect you'd need two pilots, not one (but not sure about that). At any rate you'd have to jerry-rig an extra seat in the rescue shuttle. Perhaps two, if you're willing to fly the rescue mission with a single pilot. There's no way to get the Columbia back, so that's a write-off, regardless of the damage or not. In the end, a rescue mission would have been extremely costly (of course no argument in the face of human life but we all know how the corporate ball rolls). There were a lot of things that could go wrong and likely would go wrong, but for the mission to save everyone everything had to be executed perfectly. The odds were definitely against a rescue mission, and that was assuming there was something wrong with Columbia in the first place (which at that point was at best a suspicion, nothing more). From a practical point of view, a rescue mission wasn't a realistic option at the time; and without the option of a rescue mission, inspecting the wing for damage became a pointless exercise as there was nothing that could be done about it. Would the crew have been better off with the chance of saying their goodbyes to family and loved ones before descent? Probably. But suppose their was minor damage to an extend that the descend was salvagable, but then got ruined by a distracted crew who panicked? Then what? Hindsight is easy, and we'll never know what the best outcome could have been.

Virtually every update will break some mods. If those are part mods, vessels containing those parts will be deleted from your save. For that reason, mods containing parts are a “necessary evil” that I try to limit as much as possible. Of course YMMV and others happily use dozens of part mods. But I try to limit my exposure to mod parts as much as possible, also because I find it a fun challenge to make do with what stock has provided. Having said that, I'd like to see that the game provides more basic functionality. Fairings are a great example of things done the right way. I know that a lot of people hate the stock fairings, and that’s fine. And they have multiple mods to pick better fairings from. But... if your fairing standards are low enough (and mine are), the stock ones are just fine and the game is perfectly playable with them. I'd love to see something similar with hinges (not the entire IR nine yards, just two or three parts), propellors & rotors (not that I'm into airplanes but a lot of people are) and a few necessities for basebuilding (primarily the ability to make connecting base parts easier). There's a mod for that. Yes, in most cases there is. And the mod makers usually leave no stone unturned to make their mod as extensive and encompassing as possible and that is wonderful, and they should definitely do that. But that's what's the problem is for me. Now I have to plow through five pages parts provided by a mod, where really all I wanted was one part x. That's why certain basic things need to be stock, in my book.