Kerbart

Exactly! It seems that a lot of people on the forum think that “making the game more accessible” means “AlLoWiNg NoObS tO fLy LiKe WiNgCoMmAnDeR” I think I downloaded the trial out of curiosity after a mention in XKCD. That was the 0.18 trial, with no tutorials or any other helpful information. I couldn't build a rocket (from the ground up) because the game didn't let me. That was one Scott Manley video. Trust me, if you have no experience with the game, working your way down from the capsule is not intuitive and explaining that somehow in the game is not “dumbing down the game so noobs can play it" — it's making sure new players stay with the game and don't give up after the first then minutes. When I finally had put a rocket together and it sat on the launch pad, I encountered my second challenge. Somehow I had figured out that the spacebar was for staging. So I did a countdown and at zero, I tapped the spacebar yelling lift-off! CHUNK. A chunk noise and then... nothing? I hit the space bar a few more times until after the last CHUNK the parachute came out, and then... nothing. My rocket just sat there. If it weren't for another Scott Manley video, I would never have learned abouth throttle (I though rocket engines were just on or off), and I would likely never touched the demo again. Instead I eventually landed on Mun and bought the game right after that. For a $20 indie game that's an ok experience; for a $60 A+ title it's not. If the game isn't accessible it'll be shredded to pieces in reviews. Remember, accessible doesn't mean easy. Portal wasn't easy to solve, but exceptionally accessible. Keeping the game "hard" by making it inaccessible so new players don't want to play it is the best way to ensure that it will commercially fail. Making entry into the game easy so the players can enjoy the hard challenges that spaceflight offers, is not.

Did we try lawyers? They’re hard to get rid off, and if they don’t survive... well, that’s a win too, isn’t it?

I can imagine this scenario: Going up with booster, high velocity Booster exhausted. Stage, parachute is armed As craft gets higher, velocity drops - parachute deploys Air thin enough that chute doesn't slow it down enough On the way down enough velocity is gathered to destroy chute Could it be something like that?

There's challenging and then there's needlessly difficult. And it probably hinges on personal opinion where one crosses over into the other. If a tutorial says built this rocket, tilt over to 5° at 1000m, activate SAS, throttle back to 70% at 10,000m then yes, it's more a recipe than teaching someone. It showing that getting into orbit is all about "going sideways fast enough" and not about going high enough is too easy, then I disagree. I'm going to play Chess with you, but I'm not telling you the rules. That would be too easy. Half the fun is figuring out the rules, right?! I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching players the basics instead of providing them with the "joy" of figuring out Newton's laws of motion by themselves. There's enough challenge left in making efficient design, getting those in orbit without accidents, rendez-vous and coupling, and so on.

With software releases it's always safer to bet on "later" than "earlier." They announced 2022 early last year,hence I'm assuming it'll be 2023. But it will be a nice surprise if they manage to rush it out in 2022 without too many bugs.

2022? I admire your optimism.

It hardly left the atmosphere. I hope the destination isn't Eeloo!

The same time-wasting went on when they picked out music and added it to the video clips. Most people like it when things are not just boring and straight to the point without decoration.

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.

Interesting to see that KSP is supposed to be a total integrated experience, not a bunch of things bolted together. Mentioning this for the ones who wonder why development takes so long.

For starters I wouldn't assume that there are "science points." That solution has been there in KSP 1 "for reasons" but I don't think many of us are happy with it It's grindy, you can do any experiment anywhere and use the outcome for anything. I realize that realism for realism's sake isn't making the game necessarily better but doing 18 EVA observations around Kerbin leading to having an atomic engine is asking a lot of suspension of disbelief as well. I'd rather see a much more integrated game mechanic where specific (classes of) experiments lead to specific "discoveries." A few examples of what I mean: Atmospheric research (temperature, pressure) lead to aerodynamics Ground samples (durface sampling, some core-drilling devices) lead to better landing gear Fundamental research (magnetics, spectroscopy) leads to better engines Material experiments lead to better parts And so on From a game-playing perspective I wouldn't mind that you even don't get to choose what exactly gets unlocked; technological progress doesn't work like that in reality either. It would make no two games the same. And to make bigger discoveries you'd need bigger (more complex) experiments. Maybe one team setting up a reflector and another team shooting a laser at it. You can throw in random artifacts that lead to surprise discoveries, and maybe even "reward" crashes (as opposed to revert to launch or reloading quick saves) as the research of an accident might reveal something from time to time. I like the idea that more labs in places can speed up a discovery (unlocking something in the tech tree). Perhaps something for artifact research? That could also tie in with unlocking parts further down the tech tree that are not yet accessible, but when an earlier node gets unlocked "suddenly the weird materials found in the Duna expedition make more sense now. You now have access to..." Doing it this way would make science not merely a game-token collecting exercise, but it would be a story-telling device and an incentive to go exploring.

Well... opinions vary on what is a lot of mods. I've seen people claiming they had "an average" amount of mods and then post on image of their gamedate folder with over 150 folders in it. So there's that. Textures might be compressed on disk but not in memory, so if you have a lot of part mods it can add up quickly. And then throw in memory leaks. Surely over 20 GB is a lot but not inconceivable.

Whenever laws are passed with the comment of "clearly this is intended for [xyz] and individuals should not fear [abc]" it's invariably followed by individuals getting arrested/fined for that offense two years later, and the police claiming "we agree it's ridiculous but our job is to enforce, not to interpret who the law applies to"

If the definition of satellite is "a piece of material in a stable orbit," then I can say that on multiple occasions I've launched hundreds of satellites. Well, a little bit of me, and a little bit of the Kraken.

The Steam download has DRM on it? I always was under the impression that it didn't, and copying it (to have a modded version , inoculated from unexpected updates) has worked flawless.

Consolas is better than Courier New but not my preferred monospace. Those are Roboto Mono and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, but Consolas does have the advantage of being available on locked (work) computers.

Struts

It’s just a bigger profit margin for the studio owner. The devs do not get a dime extra from the direct sales. Buying from the website instead of steam is a very noble but romantic notion. what helps the devs more is *lots* of people buying the product and Steam does excel at that.

Do I have some news for you...

Gravity would make a debris cloud sink into the ground pretty quickly. Whether the scooping is done by a Kerbal or by something similar to a mining drill is an implementation detail that is above my paygrade tomake sensible comments on. Damage is important though to provide an incentive to clean up your mess. It could be a difficulty setting though, so having debris clouds is optional. But it would add a fun dimension to the game — mining them for profit, and for safety. Could be a contract too (clean up debris cloud WX4G6 in low mun orbit).

You could have a debris “cloud” that you can fly through and “mine” with a debris scooper, Flying through/remaining in a debris cloud might induce damage, to be repaired by an engineer. From a part count perspective, a debris cloud would just be a single part.

The developers have made it no secret that modding.extensibility will be a large part of the game. It makes sense to me that the stock game will have one extra star system, and the infrastructure in the game to add more. The rest is up to mods and “planet packs” DLC. A lot of existing players are content with just Kerbin/Mun/Minmus; why spend a lot of resources on developing multiple star systems that might not even be visited? I know, not everyone likes DLC but ongoing development needs to be financed and it is, from an end-user perspective, a better alternative over subscriptions and in-game purchases (“micro payments”).

I'm not saying Linux has no benefits. What I'm saying is that the people who don't want to consider Linux are usually not aware of those benefits; they're not clear to them. Hence no incentive to install it.

You don't need C#, you can use the Kopernicus mod. Here's a tutorial: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Making_Planets