Kerbart

I agree that it's easy to read too much into multiple launch pad locations and such. Aesthetics are a big part of KSP2, and it allows for interesting gameplay if you do wan to build your own crawlers, showcase static models, create diarama's, etc. What I'm hoping for is that they somehow offer some interactivity, like the ability to refuel craft or spawn crew, and that it's not just "dead" scenery.

Thank you, @Just Jim. A lot of the more experienced forum member surely know who you were and we knew little more after you were beamed aboard the mother ship than that you were "writing," which surely left a lot to our imagination. Would there be convoluted story lines? Passion? Lust? Intrigue? Would career mode turn into a fierce cut-throat competition with Zaltronics, and the loser would be delegated to working in the zalt mines? Reality, even in Kerbal Space Program, turns out to be a bit less prosaic, regarding the writing job. It's literally* writing. Alas! But your post is appreciated not less of it. Not just because it's great to hear from you (well, that too), but also because it emphasizes what a tremendous project this undertakings is, and why it's taking such a long time. I hope at least that there's a mission where you have to build a ship loaded with 25 lawyers to escape the solar system. I'm sure everyone at Private Division will get a good laugh at that. Well, after reading your post, I'd say almost everyone... * See what I did there?

The occasional botched reentry. Realizing that your chutes never opened for whatever reason, simply not having them on the ship being one (but not exclusively) of them. When you're at 2000m AGL and 4s before impact it's surely nice to have the "EVA and pee" option. To paraphrase the great Arthur Clarke: "You will rarely ever need it. But when you do, you really need it"

Do you intend on going back to Kerbin? Parachutes are useless for 99.99% of the trip but they do come in handy when you need them on that last 1000m.

Red: putting all your eggs in one species-basket. A species that doesn't have a good track record of thinking about the long term future. Green: basically a reset. Statistically, chances are something better comes out. It's hard to imagine that something worse will come out of it. It's like a non-zero sum game.

Well according to some books it can be done in less tha 7 days.

Well taken! That's the same reason I always claim that using time acceleration is heresy (My way of playing the game might not be your way and we should respect that)

My experience is that European (ok, Dutch speaking...) weather forecasters will use the unit "hecto pascal" which is equal to the ("obsolete") often used milli bar. They're talking in the same quantities but the units are now named correctly. Also, at least in the Netherlands, the terms "pound" and "ounce" are still used, but meaning "500g" and "100g" Those are not legally valid terms but everyone knows what they mean. Not to mention expressing measures as units, referring to current as "amperage" and power as "wattage". No one will refer to voltage as "potential" so I'll forgive that, but we have solid names for the rest. The worst is that it spills over in other fields, distance in American Football is referred to as "yardage" and in other fields I see "acreage" for area. Again I'll forgive "mileage" as it's a shorthand for the rather cumbersome "miles per gallon," I don't want to be an unreasonable purist. Finally. sideways related to the well made points you made, I see a lot of my imperial friends being completely stuck in thinking that size references can't change. "How impractical it is to call a 2×4 a 5.08x10.16" well yes, and even if those beams were actually 2"×4" (I'm not a carpenter but I know that's not the actual size), you'd still call them "5×10" in metric. The same when you see translations in books or subtitles. "It's about ten miles (16.52km) away." Aside from widely accepted rules on using precision when applying factors, no one would ever give an estimate like that and while numerically incorrect, the word about suggests that a metric speaker would refer to it as "fifteen km."

I'd lean towards imperial. A banana is subdivided in a dozen slices, 7 bananas make up a "bunch" and there's probably 9¾ bunches in a bushel. When scaling units gets you arbitrary numbers, preferably primes or fractions instead of factors of ten you're definitely in Imperial territory. (*dons flame-resistant suit*)

Just kudos for you to taking a flexibe viewpoint. Discussions get so much more fruitful without entrenched positions. I hope the devs are taking note of this discussion as well, not just for a "should we/should we not" discussion but also because it exposes some good insights in how people experience the game in different ways.

Everyone plays the game in their own way, and what we cannot possibly imagine as fun, is for someone else the one, and obviously only one way the game can be played. Rumor has it that some players rush through the game using time acceleration for instance. Why you'd do that is beyond my imagination but to each their own. My point is, making certain game features available through "special options," being cheat codes, buttons or even a menu, might be a big enough turn-off for some purists to utilize it. Given the wildly different way of playing it I would say there are at least two modes, the aforementioned "Adventure Mode," and an everytrhing-unlocked-pick-your-planet "Creative Mode." I think there are enough players who will absolutely not care about "adventure mode" and to force them to "cheat" their way to playing the way they want to is just unfair to them, and might even restrict the purists who'd otherwise fully enjoy playing the game.

That is actually remarkably easy to answer: "Like KSP1 but more awesome." How that awesomeness manifests itself, we'll have to find out...

Finally somebody asking the real questions!

The challenge is to make things not too grindy. I can see how — on paper — it sounds really cool if you can only build a base after doing a full survey (magnetosphere, resources, seismographic, etc) but the trick is to wrap that in game play in such a way that it's not just checking the boxes. For instance, you can build a base anywhere but it requires less maintenance if you picked a spot in a seismological stable area, your Kerbals will live longer and reproduce more if it's not exposed to insane amounts of solar radiation, etc. So it's not just box-checking but your research will help you in making better decisions. And if you don't care about that you can still go ahead and plant your Jamestown anywhere you want.

It's only fitting it gets delayed.

I'm under the impression that Minecraft allows scripts, on both xbox and playstation

Physical? It's all inside a virtual computer generated universe for starters... (Charles Petzold ruined my life forever)

Thank you for mentioning that. It popped up in AVC so I just downloaded it straight from spacedock (I'm not too big on CKAN, that's just me). Didn't think a "fourth digit upgrade" could break anything, and rest assured, your users will always find ways to circumvent any of the work you to do make sure things go wrong. Thank you for keeping this mod updated.

I replaced AECS 1.3.3 with 1.3.3.1 and things appear to be working great. The only snag, albeit it a tiny one, is that all the gimballed engines of ships in flight have disappeared. Most of those where in orbit, so no harm done, but a probe or two might miss their orbit insertions. The log shows this message (many times, clearly) System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type of field 'AECS_Motion_Suppressor.AECS_VesselModule:Log' (1) due to: Could not load file or assembly 'KSP_Log, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. assembly:KSP_Log, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null type:<unknown type> member:(null) signature:<none>

Season 5, Episode 1, about 47m in, "Established 1973" I'll admit that I didn't find out this one myself, but it's pretty cool. I agree that the science in the show isn't as exact as some of the fans claim to be, but that they make it feel exact, which is the hallmark of any great hard science fiction.

For all mankind (The Expanse has some easter eggs referring to it, not sure if you can see that as a nod of approval, but still...) Star Trek Discovery, and its spinoff Strange New Worlds is doing surprisingly well for me but then again I always liked Star Trek. The science part is of course 0.0 but the stories are compelling and go deeper than just plain action.

The first question is: would it improve gameplay? Because for a large group of grizzled veterans, more realism equates a better game, because there are more challenges. Challenges are what keeps the game fresh, so it's important to have those. They also form a barrier of entrance to novice players, so it's important to not have too many of them. There are challenges that can easily be turned on or off in the game settings/ In KSP 1 it's the requirement for a com-link to remotely control an unpiloted ship for instance. And that's great. Axial tilt is not one of those things that is a bit tricky to turn on/off. So you probably don't want it in the Kerbin system, at least not for Kerbin and likely not for Mun either (to facilitate the inevitable rescue missions for starting players). Probably not for Minmus either, or maybe just 5° or so. Beyond that... especially when base building comes in play, axial tilt is going to provide a few fun challenges “beyond spend some dV to align orbit.” Provide enough tilt, like the 23° at Earth and things get interesting at higher latitudes. Shorter/longer days, endless days and nights, seasons (hopefully even the scenery can adapt to that). Your outpost might rely on solar cells for power. The batteries can bridge a night, but can they handle an entire winter? There's a great educational aspect to that as well. Combine it with eccentricity and you can set up a great classroom experiment showing that surface temperature depends more on latitude and axial tilt than on distance to the sun. There's diagrams to prove that, but how much cooler is it to get data from your own weather stations? I wouldn't mind seeing (significant) axial tilt in the game, even within the Kerbol solar system. Especially in the Kerbol system as it wouldn't require interstellar travel to experience it. Just not everywhere, and especially not at Kerbin to keep the game easy on starting players.

the amount of debt will likely more depend on the hardware required. Given the looming crypto crash and the direction the chip market is moving a 2023 launch looks better and better with the day.

And no multiplayer complaints yet! It'll be the first spinoff product: Kerbal Race Program

Any exotic energy source that is so volatile and spreads lots of radiation might not be suitable for in-atmosphere use. Larry Niven solved that problem by using ultra-compressed (to nearly solid form) Helium as propellant and save the nasty stuff for the vacuum of space.