Kerbart

You could use Procedural Fairings instead. You'll need to use a mod to get the results you desire anyway.

This will not be the definitive thread/poll about Mechjeb perceived as cheating or not. At least another 15 will follow. And that's just for this year.

A lot of people like making space stations with an array of a dozen gigantors. Now that's actually useful (as long as it's in orbit of the outer planets)

Firing Kerbals? The hiring cost makes the rescue missions extremely attractive.

One of the things I'm considering is building a station in parts, docking all parts together, and then deleting it and replacing it with the station without the jelly docking ports (and moar struts). It's not like you're cheating by putting the thing in orbit with hyperedit, it's just that (aside from using quantum struts) right now it seems like the only way to get a mechanically cohesive station in place. There are various tools to take care of the mundane launches though. I use kRPC with Python, allowing me to write my own launch scripts (I never warmed up for the klunky KERBAL LOLZ KOS language), I know there's some kind of routine mission manager, etc.

As mentioned before. I think most players are very happy with the features offered in 1.0. What players are disappointed with is the bugs and lack of balance. It's not like they didn't release previous versions to the public to try out after all. From a player perspective there's no reason why 1.0 should be such bug mess to the extend that within the first week two bug fixes had to be released. 1.0.2 is the version that should have been 1.0; 1.0 should really have been 0.95. Apparently Squad had reasons to take this road, but I think that the community is very passionate about "their" game and disappointed that the 1.0 release (there's only ONE 1.0 release after all!) was such a mess.

I think we all (at least those with experience in delivering software) agree on that. It's also clear that the product was rushed, the QA team itself mentioned that. Then there is this deal with GOG about the special edition boxed set. Boxed sets require production runs and those are usually tightly scheduled, so maybe that had something to do with it? I don't think anyone reasonable had a particular gripe with the sorry state 1.0 was delivered in; a lot of exciting new features were added and it takes some time to sort them out. As you mentioned, in a .9x release. What is upsetting was the decision to go live with this particular release, which pretty much unfolded exactly the way you would expect it to unfold. The new features contained bugs and are unbalanced. Nothing a few weeks of community feedback and bugfixes can't handle. Of course by then we're talking about 1.1 The old rule of "never buy a 1.0 version; wait for others to discover the bugs first" still seems to apply, although I'm happy to have been playing from .20 onward, but with each release it seems a better and better idea to wait a week before upgrading. But who's that patient?

The link seems to be broken. Don't tell my you hyperlinked it just to underline it. First of all underlining is a typographic abomination, second of all you have [ u ] tag for that.

There's a couple of things the stock fairings have going for them: You don't need a mod. I consider that a really, really big plus as I like to keep the number of mods I have limited for various reasons (performance, stability, etc) Interstage fairings are a lot easier with stock, as opposed to having to work with two bases. "Did I add that thermometer?" Stock winsâ€â€for now. There's no doubt PF looks better and if I were recording a movie I'd be using them. I also suspect that the stock fairings will set off some evolution on PF making them better in any aspect. I don't think stock needs to outperform existing mods in every aspect. I do think that, long term, stock needs to offer everything that is regarded "essential" to enjoy the game. That doesn't stop at parts but includes also things like clouds, chatter, automation (we've already seen that happening with the pilots). Stock should provide a playable basis (and the stock fairings do). If you want more/better/different in some way, get a mod. (Case in point: real chutes vs stock parachutes)

I like the challenges in career and it's gotten a lot better balanced in 1.0 I think. It doesn't feel like grinding without being to easy.

You know what can really bork a launch? Clamps in a LATER stage than your first stage, which is now pushing itself through the rest of your rocket. My assessment would be that clamps anywhere outside stage 1 should get a "you're aware of that, right?" kind of warning.

Oooh I would like that. Of course many would be screaming murder. A mob with torches and pitchforks will make it's way to Mexico City. Treason! But it would be a good way to keep ongoing development funded. You'd want an expansion pack to not interfere with the regular game, so maybe: Extra planets Extra bases to launch from (Mun, Minmus, outer planets?) Easter Eggs Cities and landmarks Contract/Mission/Career packs

I'm not in favor of that. I came to KSP for the rockets (Kerbal Space Program). I have Kerbal Alarm Clock to deal with far away destinations in space. Flying two hours to somewhere across the globe... No thank you.

It's a glowing review, but unless they changed their habits 96 doesn't mean that much from them. Don't they give an 85 score to a game that is basically a turd in a shoebox set on fire?

On rails it would do just fine in a 40km orbit. The challenge is getting it on rails, as you can't leave focus when in the atmosphere. A 70×40km orbit is perfectly possible, on the other hand. As long as it doesn't get in physics range of your active craft of course.

Bugs. Ugh! Bug fixes. Yay! Let's leave the dogging and whining about the state of affairs of 1.0 somewhere else and celebrate that something's being done about it!

How about "re-entry without hacking the heatshield's config files?"

"Volunteer" them on missions Where No Kerbal Returns?

Pluto is also not a feature on a celestial body. To the best of my knowledge of course. Or did it smack into Uranus?

Yes, that's “normal.†Packed chutes behave like any other part when it comes to heat damage. It's the deployed chutes that are insensitive to heat.

I'll have to try that. I usually burn up when I'm on a trajectory that gets me subsonic at higher altitudes and expose anything else but the heatshield. Perhaps no heatshield works better?

Yeah, that's a balancing bug (sssshh!! mentioning bugs makes you a whiner!). As Brotoro says, you really shouldn't be deploying chutes before re-entry heat. Just wait until the heat is gone and you have a reasonable speed (remember 500m/s is still around mach 2, depending on the air pressure) before deploying them. Of course you can use the chutes to bypass re-entry heating. You can also use Hyper-edit to bring your ship to the surface. Whether that's fun or not is up to yourself.

Attaboy critique is pointless. Bugs wouldn't be fixed without the feedback that there are bugs. Overly critical? 1.0, let me repeat that: ONE POINT OH. There's no reason Squad had to go to 1.0 before the end of April. Well, apparently there was, but they're not sharing with us that there was a reason in the first place, let alone what that reason was. When you're an early release game and "on the market" for many years, the 1.0 version is setting expectations. Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love the new features. But if you're going to release a "gold" version, your community who has dealt with "it's only beta LOLZ" for a long time will have certain expectations regarding bugs. “But it's impossible to have no bugs in something like this.†Absolutely. I agree. Does that make the average forum member here an whining entitled generation-xer? No. It's fine to have a bug like when doing a retrograde orbit above 500km and having three drills mounted on your space station, Valentine will turn into Jeb when EVA'ing. Yeah ok, who knew? But we're talking about when I play the game for the first time I run into half a dozen show-stopping bugs without doing anything special. On a “gold†version. Really? The QA team seems to take critisism of the how did that make it through QA kind very personal. And rightly so, since apparently they reported these bugs and not enough was done about them. So the blame's on Squad who for some reason had an immutable deadline, not on them. And in this case not “Squad†as a team, they did an awesome job with the release, even fixing bugs that were found on Sunday Twitch Streams before the game was released on Monday. But somewhere, someone, made a decision that the 1.0 release had to go out on that particular date, bugs be damned. You can't blame the community for being upset over finding an amazing amount of stupid bugs in the game. Yes, there are reasons for it. Maybe even valid reasons. But that doesn't make it any less disappointing.

Not mentioning specifics forces the reader to make assumptions. I'm assuming you're deploying the parachutes at 55km height and that's where the real problem is. Parachutes are way overpowered and indestructable once deployed, so they can slow your descend down before prolonged exposure to heat really becomes an issue. The issue is mainly with the parachutes in that case. Now, when you're doing a reentry without deploying chutes (at least not until the heat is gone) and you're coming in too steep you'll simply penetrate the surface at 1.5km/s. I agree that in those cases we should simply be burning up. It definitely is fun that reentry is now a nailbiting experience, as your capsule is roaring through the sky, leaving a fiery trail. And the COM bug adds some additional realism as you're really not *sure* that you're going to survive it!

I doubt the testers are to blame. What needs to be adjusted is the process. Experimentals lasted for... two weeks? Tops? Adjust time for logistical operations and you have even less than that. I don't have the numbers but I doubt there are hundreds of testers. Probably not even dozens Testing can be an arduous process, especially to isolate the exact steps needed to replicate a certain problem With all these factors together one can expect that not everything can be tested. Likely, testers will focus on "what's new" and not waste time on "what already works." Of course this is purely speculation, but it explains why we are where we are: a 1.0 version with bugs in trivial places that make everyone wonder why did this make it through testing? Without wanting to beat the dead horse all over again: Squad has a legion of thousands of fanatical testers called "the user community." It's not the first time that a release is followed within a week with a patch based on "community feedback." Acknowledging that "the mob" can find bugs in two days the testers cannot possible find in two weeks would be a start. The decision to go straight to 1.0 and not issue an in between 0.9x version has been questioned before the release, and here we are, a 1.0 laden with bugs. Sadly, the testers get blamed for Squad's rushed schedule.